20 July 2005
Helping Hand Reaches Out
Third World to Get Medical Supplies
by Winnipeg Free Press Staff Writer
When Phyllis Reader was sewing up one of her patients in Cambodia, she was stunned to learn she would be forced to use dull, bent needles and cotton thread.
"I sit there and I think of the massive gap of my life and theirs, " she says.
Four years ago, Reader, a retired operating room nurse who still works occasional shifts at St. Boniface General Hospital, co-founded International HOPE - Health Overseas Project Education - a Winnipeg-based organization that collects salvaged, discarded or unused medical supplies to send to Third World countries. The volunteer-run organization has sent everything from wheelchairs, gloves, cribs, x-ray machines and hospital uniforms to countries like Grenada and Zambia.
Reader is now the only Manitoban heading to Nagaland, India, and to a refugee camp in northwestern Thailand in August with two other Canadians through Medical Ministry International. Last year, Reader says she was part of the first medical team to visit Nagaland in 50 years, and says that this time she'll be packing two suitcases full of supplies like gloves and bed pads for the remote areas she'll be working in.
"We are privileged to have the standard of living we have here in Canada," she says. "And most Canadians aren't aware of it."
Reader embarked on her first medical mission to Ecuador in 1997. After spending more than 30 years in the operating room, Reader says she wanted to try something different and share her skills with people around the world. However, what she witnessed in other countries was a lack of basic equipment and technology. Reader recalls repairing the defects of the tongue and mouth on orphans touched by radiation in Kazakhstan. Before Reader's team performed the procedure on 35 children, the health workers in Kazakhstan did not have the tools to repair the children's defects, which left them unable to speak and only able to swallow gruel.
"You just wept because you're participating in one of the most intense moments in that person's life," she says. "It's a high."
Noticing how much was thrown away at St. Boniface Hospital due to manufacturer's regulations and emerging technologies, Reader decided to start International HOPE as the ultimate medical recycling program. Through word of mouth and working with hospitals and medical organizations, Reader and her team of volunteers have been able to collect an entire warehouse filled with unused equipment to be sent all over the world. International HOPE works with other grassroots organizations within other countries to ensure the medical supplies reach people who will put them to good use. This summer and fall, another batch of shipments is being sent to Ukraine, Grenada and the island of St. Vincent.
According to Reader, technology that she used as a nurse in Winnipeg int he 1960s is still being used in developing countries. She says she'd like to see International HOPE expand across the country in the future, and for the government to develop programs to send discarded medical equipment to needy areas as new technologies emerge.
Reader says not only is the result rewarding, but the need is urgent.
The majority of this world is hurting and suffering," she says.
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