Last modified: Tuesday, June 12, 2007 10:48 AM PDT Respiratory therapist Kirk Pugsley and marketing and public relations specialist Stacey Taylor load medical supplies into 50-pound duffel bags at Holy Rosary Medical Center Friday. This week a group of 11 HRMC volunteers will travel to the island nation of St. Lucia for a three-week missions trip, delivering the supplies on the way. Another medical mission of mercy By Jennifer Colton - Argus Observer Ontario - At St. Jude Hospital, at the southern edge of the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, patients commonly barter produce, livestock and other products for medical services. Doctors work in 100 percent humidity with limited supplies, serving everyone admitted — there is no trauma center, no specialized clinic to send patients to. For the next three weeks, 11 volunteers from Holy Rosary Medical Center will learn exactly what it means to work at St. Jude during the hospital’s International Mission 2007. “It’s quite an eye-opening experience,” Stacey Taylor, marketing and public relations specialist for HRMC, said Friday. “It’s just so completely different, the interaction with the people and the climate. There are things that are universal in health care, they still have to deal with the same challenges we have, only with less amenities.” St. Jude is situated near Vieuxfort on the southern end of the island and provides primary care for the rural and poor residents of St. Lucia, who cannot afford the modern health care available in St. Lucia’s capital, Castries, on the island’s north end, Taylor said. The hospital often provides charity care, depending on rotating groups of volunteers to complete staffing, she said. The group of HRMC volunteers will work in their trained medical fields: a respiratory therapist, physical therapist, four nurses with different specialization’s, a lab assistant, a histology technician, a sonographer and one individual to help with maintenance and biomedical engineering. Each will work together with the staff at St. Jude, working at least the same number of hours put in at the Ontario hospital, Taylor said. The group will start their journey Saturday, and each volunteer will take a 50-pound duffel bag full of medical supplies to the island hospital, including everything from bandages and hypodermic needles to circuits for ventilator machines. Some of the supplies are donated and others are provided by HRMC based on requests from the staff at St. Jude, Taylor said. “What’s neat is the people who have been there before have an idea of what they need,” Taylor said. “We’re not hauling unnecessary items over there. We’re able to sift through and only take the most important items.” Taylor and Kirk Pugsley, a respiratory therapist who will serve as on-site coordinator while in St. Lucia, both mentioned seeing unnecessary items — like extra bedpans and antique hospital beds — piled in corners out of the way. “They just don’t have anywhere to dispose of things,” Pugsley said. “They don’t have a landfill system like we do, and that’s one thing Americans take for granted.” Of the 11 volunteers, six are returning to the island, some for the second time. HRMC began working with St. Jude in 2004 after receiving a “Mission and Ministry” grant from Catholic Health Initiatives. The grant allowed the hospital to establish an international ministry program where HRMC members could go abroad to volunteer time and assistance to those in need, Taylor said. HRMC chose St. Lucia for the mission for accessibility — it is a three hour flights from Miami, Fla. — and because nearly everyone on the island is fluent in English as well as their native language — Patois. “The island itself is also a relatively safe place for us to go,” Pugsley said. “It’s not a wartorn country or where you have to worry about the safety of the people you’re taking.” Although this is the last year the grant will fund the program, Taylor said hospital officials are researching other funding opportunities to continue the program next year. “Just because the grant ends, we’re not going to give up on it,” she said. “We’re hoping to sustain it in the future, but there are a lot of factors.” A final blessing for the trip was held today at 1 p.m. in the chapel at HRMC.