Our patients will need crutches! Donate your old ones!

Merry Christmas Everyone!
Here's hoping you had a great time with family and friends.

The physiotherapists are preparing crutches for our patients in Quito.  Just about every patient -- whether a child or an adult -- needs crutches after surgery.

Please Please Please -- check your basement or your garage for old pairs of crutches that we can modify and pack for CAMTA's Mission 2010 in Quito, Ecuador.

Bring those crutches to any YMCA in Edmonton between January 1st and January 8th.  Click on the title to find out the exact locations for those YMCA's.

Thanks everyone for being generous with your old crutches!  Help kids and adults regain mobility!  Let children return to playing soccer and adults return to gainful employment.

Thanks.

Surplus computers released to CAMTA!

This week we were pleased to learn that the provincial government has released 20 surplus older computers and 4 printers to CAMTA for shipping in our container to the Hospital Canto a la Vida in Quito, Ecuador.
The 3 pallets of gear are already shrink-wrapped and ready for shipping.  They will be transported by truck to Saskatoon for loading into the CAMTA container.

The container is currently being certified as seaworthy.  Then it will be fully loaded and the inventory lists sent for approval and customs documentation before final shipping to Ecuador.

This is indeed a great week leading up to Christmas!

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