Dear Friends,
If you are receiving this email you have some connection with the people of the Philippines through your work with Uplift Internationale.
I have made many friends in the Philippines, many of them were directly in the path of the recent Typhoon Haiyan and I am sick with worry for them.
What do we know? Megs is fine, she was in Manila with her daughter Clouds and we have been in contact with them. Panay including Iilio and Roxas are a mess but apparently have not had the huge number of deaths reported on Cebu and Leyte. I fear gravely for our many friends from last year in Dapa. Tiny Siargao took a direct hit and I can only imagine the damage. Thus far I have had no contact from anyone on that Island.
What about the missions planned for 2014? Please be patient, we hope that UI may have a mission for 2014 but that is certainly in question. We in UI do great work but we do place a tremendous (albeit brief) strain on the hospitals we visit. It is possible both weeks of the mission may yet occur but it is certainly conceivable we may have to reset our efforts towards 2015. Germane to the outcome is the state of our equipment. Everything we had
left in Dapa and the 9 “delayed boxes” had reached the hospital in Palo (adjacent to Tacloban) at the time Haiyan struck. The 14 boxes that left Denver late this summer are yet in Rizal (a suburb of Manila) and likely are fine. I have been in contact with Abe and asked him to hold any further movement of those boxes for now.
I don’t know if the hospital in Palo yet stands. Yesterday I sent the Chief Medical Office for the Palo Hospital an email describing what is in the boxes and authorizing the use of their contents to treat the sick and the dying. The aftermath of this typhoon will certainly have tremendous negative implications on Uplift but I could not stomach the thought that lives might be saved by our supplies and equipment.
Going forward UI will recover an resume its good work. In the “worst case scenario” (all our on island equipment is destroyed) the key items to replace will be anesthesia machines, 2 autoclaves, and the surgical instruments. The rest we yet have here in my office in Wheat Ridge (all the very expensive OR monitors which came back for servicing). Our equipment is of lesser concern to the human tragedy occurring to the people of
the Philippines. I will make every effort to keep you updated.
Sincerely,
Steve Krebs, MD
President and Head of Mission
Uplift Internationale
