Help on way to Haiti
October 31, 2006
BY JIM STINSON Post-Tribune
Joe Burke has managed to get medical equipment to needy children in Haiti, but he found getting electricity to that clinic is not so easy.
When Burke, the maintenance planner for United States Steel Corp.'s Midwest Plant of Portage, was gathering spare medical equipment from the mill to send to Haiti, aid workers told him that hand-crank medical beds were needed, as the Haitian children's clinic he was helping to supply did not have electricity.
That information touched Burke.
"Right there, it just turns your heart out," said Burke, a 27-year employee of U.S. Steel.
Luckily, Burke had those old-style hospital beds, and he got approval from Midwest Plant officials to send them as well as spare clinic equipment, including sheets, blood-glucose testers and even an audio booth for hearing tests, to the poor country.
On Monday morning, two retired men drove a truck from Decatur, Ill., to pick up the three large crates of supplies from the Portage mill. The crates are off to a Springfield, Ill., shipping center, then to rural Haiti, to a clinic that Valparaiso University students helped build.
Two years after consolidating, the merger of National Steel with United States Steel Corp. has surprisingly benefited Haiti. The spare medical equipment at the Midwest Plant in Portage was sitting unused, as U.S. Steel had consolidated its medical facilities at its Gary Works plant.
Burke got the idea to donate the spare items when he heard that a Valparaiso University student group -- VU Social Action Leadership Team -- was helping to build a clinic in Haiti's part of its World Relief Campaign.
The university group had raised more than $10,000 to build a clinic in Jolitrou in northern Haiti.
The clinic will break ground on Monday, according to Jim Wetzstein, associate pastor of the Chapel of the Resurrection and VU adviser to S.A.L.T.
Wetzstein said the students rallied around the project when it kicked off in January. By May, the students had raised $12,250. But the donation of medical equipment was much needed.
When finished, the clinic will provide regular health care to about 3,000 people in Jolitrou and the surrounding area, according to VU officials. The clinic will be served by a doctor, nurse and laboratory technician supported by International Child Care. ICC was founded in the 1960s by Jim and Virginia Snavley of LaPorte.
After the plant's communications committee and Kay Sullivan, medical site director of the Gary Greater Complex, approved the shipment, the steel plant and S.A.L.T. contacted Central Illinois Christians In Mission, which supplied truck drivers Bob Thompson and Jerry Lillpop, both of Mount Zion United Methodist Church in Illinois.
The mission will ship the three large crates of equipment first to Springfield, Ill., then to New Orleans to be loaded upon a boat for Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
"I thought it was a great use of surplus medical equipment," said Tom Kelly, Midwest Plant manager.
Contact Jim Stinson at 648-3076 or
jstinson@post-trib.com 
Help on way to Haiti 
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