Olathe nonprofit launched to fight COVID-19, now sending delicate resources to Ukraine
An Olathe organization set up to connect volunteer health care professionals to hospitals overrun by COVID-19 is now sending medical supplies to Ukraine on Tuesday.
Global Care Force, formerly known as COVID Care Force, heard alarming accounts of a hospital in Kyiv low on treatments and basic tools in the aftermath of Russian’s invasion of Ukraine. Instead of sending volunteers, they raised $21,000 to bring resources overseas.
None of it has been easy, according to Scott Oberkrom, President of Global Care Force.
“We were asking ourselves what is the best way to help,” he said.
“What we heard overwhelmingly from our partners in Ukraine was volunteers were not needed and that they would be a drain on resources like housing, water, transportation.”
The organization launched in 2020 as COVID Care Force and garnered a wide network of donors and nearly 1,500 volunteers. In September 2021 it began transitioning to help hospitals overseas under the name of Global Care Force.
Through talks with refugee groups and missionary workers, the organization connected with a hospital in northern Ukraine last month that was in need of medical supplies and medicine. The doctors sent a list of resources they needed, ranging from scissors and wound dressings to cancer treatment medications and insulin.
Global Care Force did not anticipate the requests would range from basic necessities like scissors to complex and expensive cancer treatments.
“I am not a doctor so I couldn’t pronounce half of the items that were on there,” Oberkrom said.
Many of the resources requested were hard to come by. There were some, he said, that even in the U.S. were unavailable as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine disrupted medical supply chains around the world.
Sending the packages, full of sensitive medical supplies, is also a challenge.
“We are working with medicines which carry a little more scrutiny when being transported in comparison to something like diapers or clothing items,” he said.
Brenda Poor, a spokeswoman for Global Care Force, said the packages were stuffed into seven large suitcases and checked onto a plane to Warsaw, Poland alongside the non-profit’s director of operations on Tuesday afternoon.
The next step is for the organization to transport the supplies over the border.
“The situation in Ukraine can be dangerous,” Oberkrom said. “We have option A option B and an option C — we’re just crossing our fingers that the first option is what’s going to work.”
The Kyiv hospital is set to receive at least 10,000 doses of antibiotics, but is still in need of more negative pressure wound therapy kits — which help prevent infections in wounds and consist of tubing, a vacuum pump, and wound dressings.
The organization is accepting public donations on their website here.
This story was originally published April 5, 2022 at 1:39 PM.
