Supplies From Relief Organizations : Medical Aid Leaving Santa Ana for Nicaragua

A dozen volunteers spent Wednesday morning in a Santa Ana warehouse loading a 40-foot sea container with $200,000 worth of medical supplies destined for sick and wounded civilians in Nicaragua.

The shipment included antibiotics, pain relievers, flashlights and batteries and disposable syringes collected from physicians and pharmaceutical companies nationally by Operation California, a private nonprofit relief organization based in Los Angeles. It ships $10 million in supplies annually to 26 countries.

Operation California stores several million dollars worth of donated supplies at the Penn-Mayflower Van and Storage facility in Santa Ana and ships about 15 containers from there each year, said Richard Walden, president of Operation California. The space is donated by warehouse owner Gary Larsen, a member of Operation California’s board of directors.

Also helping Wednesday were members of other relief organizations based in Los Angeles, including the Archbishop Romero Relief Fund (named for Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, the Salvadoran cleric who was assassinated in 1980 while saying Mass), Medical Aid for El Salvador, the Committee to Aid Nicaragua, the Central American Health Rights Project and Bikes Not Bombs.

Earlier this month, a disassembled emergency field hospital left the warehouse for shipment to Nicaragua, Walden said. That shipment, also valued at $200,000, contained X-ray machines, sterilizers, operating tables, hand instruments, forceps and other clinical supplies. It was scheduled to leave from Terminal Island in Los Angeles Harbor this morning. The supplies packed Wednesday are to leave the harbor Aug. 11.

Aid to Ministry of Health

The aid is being sent to the Nicaraguan Ministry of Health, which is to supervise distribution by a coalition of Protestants and Roman Catholics to Nicaraguan doctors in Managua and rural areas, Walden said.

None will be used by soldiers of the Sandinista government or by the U.S.-backed contra rebels fighting to overthrow the regime, Walden said: “We have a position in favor of helping innocent bystanders in civil strife. We do not care what U.S. government policy is.”

He denied that the shipment comes in reaction to testimony at the Iran- contra hearings by Lt. Col. Oliver North, who urged Americans to increase their support for the anti-Sandinista guerrillas, whom he called freedom fighters. Walden did say, however, that North’s testimony “put a candy coating on abuses of the contras .”

Walden said the relief group was encouraged to send supplies after organizing a fact-finding group of 16 physicians and health officials to Nicaragua. The doctors described a well-organized system of health care, but one lacking adequate supplies and equipment to make it work.

The doctors told of a lack of potable water and sewage control and reported a dramatic increase in infectious diseases, diarrhea and tuberculosis caused by migration related to the 5-year war, pressure on food supplies, sewer systems and medical facilities. Pediatric heart surgeons and modern ambulances are also needed, Walden said.

Because of a U.S. embargo against the Managua government, Walden said, the supplies will be shipped to Costa Rica, then trucked to Nicaragua.

“Our feeling is (that) as long as the economic blockade and blockade of international relief is maintained, we ought to keep supplying civilian noncombatants in Nicaragua with the means they need to keep going,” he said.

For the last two weeks, medical supplies stored at the Santa Ana warehouse have been loaded for Mexico and the Philippines, as well. Walden said Operation California also maintains active programs in Vietnam, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Guatemala, El Salvador and Sudan.