Planes, trains, and shipping containers: Good logistics is essential to the mission

​Without the transport of medical supplies, implants, and surgical instruments this mission simply wouldn’t happen.

The logistics for this trip started soon after the 2017 mission was over. First, the necessary items are shipped to Creighton University in Nebraska where they are collected into larger packages. These packages are then shipped to Miami where they are loaded into a shipping container and sent to the Dominican Republic (DR).

When the mission team arrives at ILAC, the pallets are waiting. These supplies are then bussed across town to Juan Bosch Hospital. In 2016 we acquired a storage room at Juan Bosch which holds supplies at the Hospital so we don’t have to take the heavier or bulkier supplies and equipment back and forth to ILAC.

Getting items back from the DR is in some ways more complicated. The mission’s Queen of Logistics, Shandy Welch, says “There is a lot of finger crossing.” She relies heavily on the mission volunteers to bring items back in their luggage. She also ships items through DHL which she says is much better than any of the previous companies she has used (one shipment took a detour to Africa before it was located and rerouted back to the U.S). Shandy also said that many missions will simply leave stuff in the country as a donation but the nature of the expensive implants required for orthopedic work makes that impractical.

Here are just a few pictures of the part and parcel of logistics.

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"Movement is life, freedom, and independence."
​-Dr. Paul Duwelius, Founder of Freedom to Move