A Portland nonprofit is helping fight COVID-19 in Maine and now Puerto Rico, after uncovering a $200,000 cache of medical supplies there — supplies the group itself had sent to the U.S. territory over two years ago.
Partners for World Health collects donations of new or used medical goods and equipment, prepares and repackages them, then distributes them globally where they’re urgently needed. In October 2017, the group shipped two 40-foot containers of supplies to Puerto Rico, which had been devastated a few weeks earlier by Hurricane Maria.
Many of the donations went to disaster relief efforts in San Juan, but some were routed to Vieques, a 20-mile strip of land just off the main island of Puerto Rico. When the small hospital on Vieques had to close because of employee losses, the supplies — including personal protective gear — were stored inside and apparently forgotten.
Until Partners founder and president, Elizabeth McLellan, began looking for them.
“Nobody seemed to be able to find [the supplies],” she told Mainebiz in an interview Tuesday. “Months went by, and I’d ask, ‘Where are they?’”
Fortunate find
Accessing or even accounting for such goods is difficult in Puerto Rico, which is still reeling from Maria. The Category 5 storm killed over 3,000 people there, and two and a half years later, basic infrastructure remains in shambles.
McLellan visited Puerto Rico in December 2018 to figure out why the aid wasn’t being deployed, and had planned to return there last month. But then the pandemic hit. She was grounded in Maine.
In Puerto Rico, her partner on the relief effort continued the hunt. Jesus Alvelo, a doctor at Bayamon Medical Center on the main island and president of a volunteer health services group, eventually tracked down the supplies and secured their release with the help of health officials.
On April 4, Puerto Rico Health Secretary Lorenzo González announced the discovery of the supplies. Local health institutions, he promised, would soon begin receiving them. McLellan on Tuesday said that some have now gone to a makeshift clinic in Vieques, set up in a former school.
Among the trove: 15,280 pairs of medical gloves, 1,620 respiratory masks and tubing, 1,440 N95 face masks, 563 surgical gowns, 105 bottles of hand sanitizer and more, all packed in 467 boxes and weighing nearly a ton.
The discovery is welcome news for the territory and its population of 2.9 million, including 9,300 on Vieques. As of Tuesday, 923 cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed in Puerto Rico, and 45 people have died of the disease.
The hospitals and clinics there “are up against the same crisis we are in Maine,” McLellan said. “They need help … It’s unfortunate that some people don’t even realize Puerto Rico is part of the U.S.”
The aid, like the coronavirus, isn’t limited by geographic borders. McLellan, a nurse and former health care administrator who founded Partners for World Health in 2009, said she and her team are also busy responding to pandemic demands across Maine and New England. Partners is the only medical supply recycler in the region.
With a crew of volunteers and a staff of eight, all now working remotely, Partners has sent intravenous pumps to New Hampshire, a variety of items to Connecticut, and 7,000 N95 masks to hospitals including Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor and Maine Medical Center in Portland. A team of 75 volunteer sewers are also stitching together masks and gowns from recycled “blue wrap,” a material used to cover surgical instruments.
Meanwhile, McLellan is not sure how or why the supplies in Puerto Rico weren’t put to use earlier, but glad they’re finally doing some good.
“Although the initial mismanagement of our donation is upsetting,” she said, “it is comforting to know that these supplies will help to save the lives of those on Vieques.”
