Needy communities in northern Chile will be receiving medical and dental equipment and supplies in the next month or so thanks to Rotary World Help in British Columbia and the lead sponsor club, Rotary Club of Ladner.
Rotary clubs in Iquique, Chile, a city of 191,468 near the northern border with Peru and Bolivia, will be receiving a shipping container filled with the equipment and supplies for remote towns and villages in that part of the country.
Over 20 Rotarians, from the Rotary Club of Ladner, which was the lead club sponsoring this shipment, and other clubs, showed up on February 23, 2019 to load the shipping container from a warehouse in Coquitlam, thanks to a Rotary World Help (RWH) team which is continually gathering the equipment from hospitals and medical and dental facilities in BC, catalogue it and prepare it for shipping.
Each box of medical, dental supplies boxed, labeled and bar coded by the RWH team | Each box scanned and recorded for this shipment | An inventory is prepared for the shipment and is sent to the receiving Rotary clubs |
Boxes of supplies transferred to the loading dock | Hospital beds and a wide variety of medical equipment is shipped, with Arthur Birk and Ulf Ottho | Dental chairs and equipment are also part of the shipment, with Jennifer Graham Yagin, left |
Just one of the pallets of supplies | Jim Burnett prepares a hospital bed for loading | Graham Witcher and Arthur Birk help load a bed |
Thanks to some younger Rotarians with strong backs heavier equipment is positioned in the container | Rotarians at work | Graham Witcher, left, with Ralph Towsley, one of the three founders of RWH in 1993 |
Bobby Yagin provides his expertise on the forklift | Bobby and Jennifer Yagin | Bobby and Jennifer Yagin flank Jennifer's mother, Patricia Sibley |
Jim Burnett and Arthur Birk prepare to finish the container loading | The last item to be loaded, and the first seen at the container's receiving end, is a hospital bed mattress with the Canadian flag | Graham Witcher completes the container loading by addiing the official shipping seal |
Rotary Club of Ladner is the lead sponsor of this shipment to Chile, loaded by Ladner Rotarians and members of various clubs in Metro Vancouver in Rotary Districts 5040 and 5050 |
Rotary World Help (RWH) is a non profit organization aimed at collecting and distributing medical equipment and supplies, dental, optical, education and sports equipment and disaster relief supplies to international recipients in need. RWH is a non-religious, non-political charity run by 45 Rotary clubs mainly in Rotary Districts 5040 and 5050, throughout Metro Vancouver, up the coast to Powell River, Prince George and as far away as Summeride, PEI.
This container was the 395th shipped to 62 countries on five continents since RWH was founded in 1993, bringing the estimated total of people helped to almost 12 million and value of goods shipped to $138 million.
Future shipments are scheduled for Guatemala, the Philippines and Ukraine, where the visit of a group of Rotarians in 1992 prompted the founding of RWH.