Two shipping containers, packed to capacity with donated items from Southern Cross Care’s former residential aged care home, left Parkes on Tuesday bound for Timor Leste.
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In addition to donating $15,000 to locally based charity ParaMarcia to assist Timorese people with improved health services, Southern Cross Care offered the nursing home’s equipment and furniture along with 10 tonne of roofing iron.
The shipment includes 37 as new hospital electrically operated beds.
These are a huge morale booster for remote area clinics that lack modern equipment.
Southern Cross Care’s Chief Executive Paul McMahon said the organisation was delighted to do something practical to support the people of East Timor.
“Southern Cross Care has won numerous awards for our sustainability programs so opportunities to share and sustain resources, like the ParaMarcia program are a good fit for us,” he said.
“I’d like to acknowledge a couple of key people including Bill Shalvey and Peter Deardon for helping to make it happen.”
Organiser Bill Shallvey, on behalf of ParaMarcia, said packing the containers was a huge effort, completed by a dedicated team of people from different church, community service groups and individuals from Parkes and Peak Hill.
Parkes Shire Council donated more than 200 hours of labour to the project.
“Council has a formal friendship agreement between Parkes and the village of Weberek and are always very supportive of our efforts,” Bill said.
“Their support this time with the labour over a period of days was invaluable. We couldn’t have done it without them.
“The council guys genuinely got involved – they were interested and they really wanted to do it because of the cause, not just because they were rostered on.”
Stephen Edwards Construction, who built Southern Cross Care’s new residential aged care home, donated $5,000 while Sci-Fleet Roofing Contractors donated $1000 as well as the labour to remove the roof.
“Again they engaged in the cause and have taken a genuine interest in Timor,” Bill said.
“Mark Rudenko, the site supervisor, was amazing with his coolness and professionalism dealing with commissioning the new facility and decommissioning the old with us volunteers under his feet.”
Healthshare Linen Service Orange generously provided three tonne of linen to the cause including blankets, cot blankets, baby bibs, sheets, towels and pillowcases.
Logistics companies Linfox and Pacific National freighted the container from Sydney to Parkes and back to Sydney again once packed.
“Tony Latter and Nelson Scott from Blayney Cranes also provided generous support placing the containers strategically and removing them,” Bill said.
“Gary Potts was in the mix and provided great local logistical organisation while Richard and Christine Chehade from Oceansky logistics in Brisbane generously supplied their expertise in coordinating the exercise in requisitioning containers, their transport overseas and processing in Timor.
“The whole team are so courteous, professional and helpful repeating what they did for us also in 2016.”
The West Wyalong Rotary Club also got on board and donated $5,500 which was used to purchase new medical equipment.
“We purchased Sphygmomanometers, which are blood pressure monitors and Digital Foetal Dopplers which are handheld ultrasound baby heartbeat monitors used to hear an embryo or fetus' heartbeat during all stages of pregnancy,” Bill said.
“Many of these items are not freely available to health workers in remote villages and clinics.
“Quota also helped out and provided a good supply of locally prepared hygiene kits for the village women.”
The containers are due to arrive in Dili, the capital of East Timor around December 2.
“It’s our intention to have a small team of people from the Uniting Churches in Parkes and Peak Hill on the ground in Dili to help with the distribution and supervise transport to nine different destinations,” Bill said.
“Some are in Dili itself, but the bulk of the gear is to go to the remote health district of Manufahi.
“There are 19 hospitals and clinics of varying sizes within Manufahi, some of the clinics only have one room without possibly a table or a chair.”
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