Up and Down the Isle Posted by Kimberly Jacobson | Oct 24, 2012 | 172 views

About 250 people attended the Friends of the Anacortes Community Forest Lands’ annual benefit on Saturday, which made more than $41,000 for the organization’s Forest Education and Stewardship Programs.

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The Rotary Club of Fidalgo Island recently completed a project involving the collection of donated items and filling a 40-foot shipping container destined for two health care-related recipients in Guatemala. The goal was to provide support equipment and supplies to deliver medical and surgical care to the indigent people in the southwestern regions of the country.

The contents of the container were split between a hospital in the town of San Lucas Toliman where club member Dr. Stephen Miller is involved in taking medical mission teams specializing in foot surgery and to the LaCurvina Clinic near Monterrico. Miller received a list of requested supplies and equipment from the hospital administration and local doctors.

The donated items will enhance the medical care services being provided for little or no cost to the patients and will reduce the amount of equipment Miller and other surgical teams will need to bring on future medical missions.

Some of the equipment, estimated at a value of $75,000, that was shipped in the container include a fluoroscopy machine (for real time X-rays), laptop computers for the clinic, education supplies, surgical instruments, X-ray view boxes, crutches, orthopedic splints, cast material, medical supplies and a refrigerator/freezer.

LaCurvina Clinic, which provides the health care needs of eight villages, was recently built with funds from the Seattle Foundation and many Washington Rotary clubs. The construction of the clinic was coordinated by the Rotary Club of Lake Stevens and the Rotary Club of Vista Hermosa in Guatemala City. Fidalgo Island Rotary Club was one of the contributors to the project. The clinic will be staffed by a number of doctors from the U.S. led by Dr. Jennifer Hoock of Seattle and doctors in Guatemala.

The success of this project depended on the coordination efforts of the receiving club, the Rotary Club of Vista Hermosa, as well as the phenomenal efforts negotiating the mountains of paperwork by Guatemala Rotarian Julio Grazioso.

“Without his persistence and dedicated help we could not have brought all this aid into the country,” Miller said. “He was awesome!”

Fidalgo Island Rotary meets 7 a.m. Tuesdays at the NWESD building.