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Lake Saint Louis Hospital Sends Five Truckloads of Equipment to Help Eastern European Nation

While updating to the latest technology equipment, SSM St. Joseph Hospital West has also helped people in need some 6,000 miles away through a humanitarian organization known as A Call To Serve International.

A chance meeting between two health care workers in a church in Columbia, MO has made all the difference for the poor in the Eastern European country of Georgia.

When purchased 27 new hospital beds recently—beds equipped with the latest technology—the hospital donated its old beds to A Call To Serve International (ACTS) for use in Georgia.

A Chance Meeting

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Janet Pestle, RN, chief nursing officer for SSM St. Joseph Hospital West, was visiting a church in Columbia in February when general surgeon Dr. Patricia Blair approached her. Dr. Blair suggested that the two women might help the people of the Republic of Georgia through the ACTS organization.

Blair founded the non-profit ACTS, (A Call To Serve) International, in 1992 in Mountain View, California. It was the first American nongovernmental organization in Georgia.

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Blair had first visited Georgia in 1991, when she lead the American Emergency Physicians' group in response to the Georgian Medical Association’s call for assistance following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

To date, ACTS has shipped more than $420 million in medication, supplies, and equipment and provided village clinic renovations through U.S. Department of State EUR/ACE grants, according to ACTS International’s Facebook page. The organization’s priorities are diabetic care, emergency and disaster medicine and women's and children's health.

With a population of just under 5 million, Georgia is an Eastern-European nation on the eastern edge of the Black Sea, with Russia on its northern boundary and Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan to the South. Until 1991, it was part of the Soviet Union.

Sister-city links have been established between Columbia, Missouri, and Kutaisi, Georgia, focusing on public administration, business, education, health, art and culture.

Pestle said most hospital beds in Georgia are similar to traditional beds found in homes. The beds from SSM St. Joseph Hospital West will allow physicians in Georgia to elevate a patient’s head after surgery, one of the keys to improved recovery.

Pestle said that she was already focused on the beds at St. Joseph, and when she met the ACTS founder, Blair asked her outright if the hospital had any equipment it was getting rid of that ACTS could use in Georgia.

“It was ironic because I was in the middle of working on trying to get the newest technology beds here in Lake Saint Louis,” Pestle said. 

A Gift of Hope

Less than six months later, SSM St. Joseph Hospital West has shipped five truckloads of equipment to Georgia. “One was an 18-wheeler filled with everything from beds to old waiting room furniture to old mammography machines to old cribs and exam tables, to medical books and journals,” Pestle said.

Dr. Guram Amiridze, vice president of operations for ACTS-Georgia, said every donation is an improvement to operations in the country. “These beds are very needed in Georgia,” said Amiridze. “Many health care supplies are rudimentary in our country.  Hospital and clinics rarely have the modern medical equipment common in the United States.”

Pestle gave the example that often by the time breast cancer tumors are discovered in Georgia, “the tumors have come to the surface of the skin. We have the latest and greatest here. It is an inspiration for us to give to someone who needs these things and will use them.”

It’s all in a day’s work for the humanitarian organization which goes by the motto: “The hardest part of charity... is the asking. Join with ACTS to change the world. Together we can and will make the difference.”  

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