A new voyage for CAMTA

In August, the CAMTA executive made a decision to support the Hospital Canto a la Vida of the Tierra Nueva Foundation in Quito, Ecuador by supplying hospital equipment to outfit the beautiful new building.

It's been a flurry of phone calls, visits to the hospital equipment depot and arrangements.  But finally today

 IT ALL STARTED TO HAPPEN!

Just after 10 this morning our wonderful three year old container arrived to receive the surplus hospital equipment that has been stored at Alberta Hospital Edmonton.  The volunteer team was ready and waiting.

Pablo Valenzuela, Sara Irving, Jason Tong, Andy Escalona and Matt Moreau were ready for the heavy lifting.  Glenn Day and I were there for the logistics.

There is no proper loading dock.  The gang lifted the stretchers one by one into the container.

Matthew rolled them to the back and locked the wheels.

Glenn helped the forklift driver load the operating room tables one by one onto the forklift.

Pablo rolled the operating room light into the back of the container.

I provided sidewalk supervision whilst the gang secured the neonatal beds with their tall overhead lights.

Here's Jason and Sara tightening up the belts!

And then with the mission accomplished, we poised with the truck driver for a photograph.

back:  Andy Escalona, Matt Moreau, Pablo Valenzuela, Jason Tong, Ken our truck driver

front:  Glenn Day, Sara Irving.

in the background:  CAMTA's FIRST CONTAINER SHIPMENT!!!!

Glenn then ceremoniously (mischievously) secured the container.

And to make sure there were no surprises and all arrangements were complete I followed the truck driver all the way to the Overland Container Service yard.  Here's the container going into storage!

What happens now?

In about 10 days we hope that more surplus hospital and computer equipment will be available.  We are waiting on paperwork!  And then the Canadian Food for the Hungry IMED staff will bring their trailer and tractor from Saskatoon to pick-up that container and return it to their home base for unloading, inventory and reloading with even more great hospital items like beds, stretchers, anesthetic machines and an ultrasound machine or two.  We even have two dental offices!  After customs paperwork we hope to ship the container by sea with arrival inland at Quito early in the spring.

Check out the Canadian Food for the Hungry IMED program here.

Watch for more news as the container program progesses!

Thanks.

John