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PMG IN GUATAMALA

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Meeting with Guatamala Agriculture officials

 

In July, 2012, the State of Alabama Department of Agriculture traveled to Guatemala City, Guatemala to meet with Minister of Agriculture of Guatemala and other cabinet officials of Honduras. This photo is a picture at a conference with the Minister of Agriculture of Guatemala with Commissioner of Agriculture John McMillan along with Dean of Agriculture for Auburn University Dr William Batchelor.

 

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Commissioner John McMillan and Dean Batchelor of Auburn University with Partners of the Americas Representatives from Guatemala at the Westin Hotel, July 31, 2012

 

Visit to the Minister of Interior for Guatemala, July 31, 2012

 

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Alabama Delegation Security Team with Local Guatemalean Police

Alabama Delegation Security Team with Local Guatemalean Police Serving as Security for the Delegation, July 31, 2012, Guatemala City, Guatemala

 

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Hartselle hospital beds get second life in Guatemala

 

 

HARTSELLE, Alabama - In what one volunteer described as a "almost a miracle" 50 local hospital beds avoided their landfill grave this morning and soared with new life to help save even more lives in a distant land.

 

The beds rolled out of the recently closed Hartselle Medical Center shortly after 8 onto a tractor-trailer, which will unload the beds onto a Panalpina cargo plane destined for a children's oncology hospital in Guatemala City. "These beds have zero monetary value here, but in another country, it will be like brand new hospital beds that have never been open," said Nathaniel Richardson, chief financial officer and senior vice president of Decatur-Morgan Hospital.

 

To buy these 50 beds new today would cost more than $250,000, he said. Thanks to cooperation among Huntsville Rotary Club, Panalpina, Huntsville Hospital, which owns Decatur-Morgan and the closed Hartselle center, it will cost only $6,000 to send the beds to Guatemala.

The Rotarians raised the money to cover the shipping costs, which Panalpina agreed to do for nothing more than it costs them to make the 1,400-mile trip. Huntsville Hospital made the beds available, which included on Wednesday tearing down a bricked-up entrance to the center's shipping dock from which to load the beds.

 

"You could almost call it a miracle for the networking and cooperation that is here today," said Robert Mayes of the Huntsville Rotary Club. "It's a remarkable story of a bunch of people coming together."

 

The Rotary Club has partnered with the Guatemalan hospital for seven years and provided beds, ventilators, infusion pumps and other medical supplies. The hospital serves the entire Guatemalan nation, especially poor, rural families, for many of whom it takes a two-week journey to reach the hospital, Mayes said.

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