The Salem News recently visited the BHI’s warehouse in Beverly, MA to cover our emergency response effort to the earthquake in Haiti. Read the full article here.
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BEVERLY — A nonprofit based in Beverly is preparing to ship hundreds of pieces of desperately needed medical equipment to Haiti on Saturday to treat the thousands of people who were injured in last weekend’s earthquake.
Build Health International has been packing up the equipment over the last few days in its warehouse inside the Cummings Center. It includes operating room tables, blood pressure monitors, pulse oximeters, sterilizing machines and surgical kits.
“Anything to do with surgery,” Build Health International co-founder and managing director Jim Ansara said.
The relief shipment will be the latest, and largest, sent by Build Health International since the earthquake devastated the country last week. It has already sent several smaller shipments.
Build Health International is well positioned to respond to the latest crisis in Haiti. Ansara, who lives in Essex, started the nonprofit along with Dr. David Walton in 2014. The organization has built more than 60 medical facilities in Haiti and has completed more than 150 projects in Haiti, Latin America and Africa.
BHI has more than 100 staff based in Haiti, many of them Haitians, and had been working on a half-dozen building projects when the earthquake struck over the weekend.
“We started responding immediately Saturday morning,” Ansara said. “By mid-day we had people mobilizing and plans in place. We started flying people to Haiti (from Beverly) on Sunday.”
Ansara said BHI is supporting two of its primary partners — Boston-based Partners in Health and Newton-based Health Equity International — with medical equipment, medicine and logistics. Partners in Health supports 12 hospitals in Haiti, while Health Equity International operates St. Boniface Hospital in southern Haiti.
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