Swanson Foundation team joins colleague in Haiti

OGDEN — Chuck Swanson was standing on top of a mountain in Mongolia when he got word he was needed in Haiti.

That was Sunday. On Monday, Swanson, chairman of the board of the Dr. W.C. Swanson Family Foundation, was on a plane heading back to Ogden to get ready for a Tuesday night departure to Port-au-Prince.

The foundation refurbishes medical equipment and sends out supplies, with most of its work done in Mongolia over the past decade. But the group's volunteer medical director, Ray Price, is in Haiti with a humanitarian mission, and he sent up an SOS: Come quickly. We need equipment. We need help.

Most everything going on in Haiti medically since the quake involves teamwork, and just getting there is no exception. Groups of doctors and other volunteers, even reporters and photographers, are forming alliances and getting to know others who are going, working together to get people where they need to be.

The foundation joined up with another group, sending Swanson and electronics tech Roy Jacobson to Port-au-Prince. Jacobson will install some equipment that's already in Haiti, including a C-arm (fluoroscope), X-ray machines and equipment to sterilize surgical instruments, said foundation president and chief executive officer Cindy Purcell. And they'll be packing equipment such as surgical instruments and orthopedics devices.

Each year, the foundation sends from three to 13 sea containers, each valued at $300,000, to Mongolia loaded with angio equipment, X-rays, made-up surgical trays and sterile dental instruments. It's all ready to use.

Five years ago, they started sending experts, as well, to teach people how to use and maintain the equipment. They'd learned that they could send over medical equipment, but when something needed to be fixed or when supplies ran out, it could just end up in a hall closet somewhere doing no good for anyone. So now they also provide information on where to get the add-on supplies that may be depleted over time, Purcell said.

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