Haiti December 2010
On December 27, 2010, Carolina, her father Rolando, Philippe Chryssicopoulos, Daniele Benatoff and Maria Luz Porcella travelled to Haiti to donate 200 more wheelchairs to Partners in Health (Zanmi Beni) in Port-au-Prince.
The wheelchairs have been received by Partners in Health but will soon be distributed to people around the country. The Walkabout team spent the afternoon in Haiti visiting the children who live at Zanmi Beni and playing with the kids that Walkabout previously donated Rough Riders to in May 2010.
The Rough Rider wheelchairs are holding up great and everyone seems to love them. Word on the street is that they are the absolute best wheelchair to have!
Walkabout was also able to visit Project Medishare on December 27, 2010. Project Medishare was founded by Dr. Barth Green (head of The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis) and is a non-profit organization based out of Bernard Mevs Hospital in Port-au-Prince.
Project Medishare is dedicated to sharing human and technical resources with its Haitian partners in the quest to achieve quality healthcare and development services for all.
Walkabout donated 50 Rough Rider wheelchairs to Project Medishare in May and went back to visit some of the patients on December 27th.
The feedback from the therapists is that the Rough Rider wheelchair is the most suitable wheelchair for the rough and rugged terrain of Haiti, and Walkabout has been asked by several organizations to send more Rough Riders down.
Project Medishare itself accommodates 15 spinal cord injured patients and is currently in the process of building a prosthetics centre within the clinic.