"Breathe Hope" Aims To Help Needy Children Breathe Easier
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- An organization that collects used medical equipment for the needy has moved from the East End, to Green Tree.
A vast warehouse is filling up, as the nonprofit moves more than an acre of used hospital equipment to the new location. Equipment ranges from walkers to wheelchairs, from bassinets to hospital beds, bound for needy patients in Latin America, the Caribbean, as well as western Pennsylvania.
At any given time, the warehouse will be packed with 3,000 boxes of medical equipment - more than 100 tons. At the moment, the big push is to help people with the simple act of breathing.
Deputy director Angela Garcia has begun a nationwide campaign called Breathe Hope, collecting nebulizers that are no longer needed. It hit close to home when her son Lucas developed a respiratory problem.
"And I had to rush him to Children's Hospital," she recalls. "And they gave him a nebulizer to take home. At the same time, my teams overseas were bringing back photos of mothers like me, waiting in line at the one station, the one nebulizer they had for the whole village."
Global Links has set up collection stations, listed on www.globallinks.org. New masks and tubing will complete the package. Angela says Lucas spurs her on.
"It's hard watching him struggle to breathe. I cannot imagine moms having to struggle and wait, and not have the options we do."
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