A10 FOLIO OTHEGLOBEANDMAIL | FRIDAY,MARCH27,
“We’re working closely with the
hospital and we’re relieving some
of the pressure on them,” he said
in an interview with The Globe
and Mail on Thursday.
The Samaritan’s Purse team in
Cremona has now reached full ca-
pacity, with a group of 67: doc-
tors, nurses, technicians, hygiene
specialists and electricians, most-
ly from Canada, United States and
Britain. At the moment, it con-
tains about 50 patients and has
already released 12. One patient
died earlier this week.
Mr. Troke is a veteran of several
emergency medical missions,
mostly recently in 2019 in the
Democratic Republic of Congo,
where Samaritan’s Purse treated
Ebola patients. The COVID-19 dis-
ease has already alarmed the
team because it can spread so
quickly. “It’s not as deadly as Ebo-
la, but the unique aspect about it
is that it’s very infectious,” he
said. “It really targets vulnerable
older people. You really do see
the suffering of the patients.”
Cremona – the birthplace of
master luthier Antonio Stradivari- is about 100 kilometres south-
east of Milan in the region of
Lombardy, now infamous as the
centre of the European COVID-
outbreak. At last count, Lombar-
dy had almost 35,000 COVID-
cases, more than France or Iran,
and 4,861 deaths – more than half
the Italian total. Cremona (pop-
ulation 72,000) and its vicinity
alone had 3,340 cases by Thurs-
day.
Samaritan’s Purse started in
the United States in 1970, expand-
ed to Canada in 1990 and is led by
Franklin Graham, son of Chris-
tian evangelist Billy Graham. The
group’s specialty is disaster relief
missions. Well-funded and
equipped – the four-engine DC-
jet is its own – it has sent medical
teams to Liberia during the Ebola
outbreak, house-repair teams to
areas wrecked by hurricanes and
floods in the Bahamas and Mo-
zambique, and distributed food
to displaced people in Darfur.
The charity has its critics. Fran-
klin Graham was criticized by Is-
lamic leaders in Britain in 2003
for calling Islam “a very evil and
wicked religion.” A couple of
years earlier, The New York Times
reported that it “blurred the lines
between church and state” when
it was helping victims of the El
Salvador earthquake.
Mr. Stokes said the charity of-
fered to fly in a team to Cremona
as the Lombardy COVID-19 out-
break went from serious to disas-
trous. In recent weeks, ItalianPrime Minister Giuseppe Conte
has sought international help for
the country’s overburdened hos-
pitals. Medical teams from Rus-
sia, Cuba and China, among other
countries, have sent in teams of
doctors and aircraft full of med-
ical equipment such as face
masks, protective gowns and ven-
tilators.
The need for help has become
more urgent in recent days as
thousands of infected Italian
medics are placed in quarantine.
By Thursday, 33 hospital workers,
including doctors, had died, ac-
cording to Italy’s National Insti-
tute of Health. The Cremona
medics are well-aware they could
get infected; they have their tem-
peratures taken twice daily. None
has shown any symptoms so far,
Mr. Troke said.
The Samaritan’s Purse team in
Cremona is entirely self-suffi-cient, aware that the operation
cannot rob any resources form
the 600-bed Cremona hospital.
All of the team’s equipment –
ventilators, monitors, beds, the
pharmacy and testing laboratory- will be left behind so it can de-
ployed elsewhere.
The eight Canadian nurses will
be rotated back home after 30
days, after which new team mem-
bers will be flown in. The mission
is expected to last three months
and costs about US$1-million a
month to operate, Mr. Stokes
said.
Mr. Troke said Canada needs to
learn from the Italian experience.
“In Canada, we need to really pre-
pare ourselves and test aggres-
sively so we can contact trace,” he
said, referring to tracking people
who have come into contact with
someone who has tested positive
for COVID-19.
Doctorsworkwith
high-quality
respiratory-care
equipmentatthe
emergencyfieldhospital
inCremona,Italy.
KIME.ROWLAND/
SAMARITAN’SPURSE
AlltheSamaritan’sPurseequipment–ventilators,monitors,beds,the
pharmacyandlab–willbeleftbehindtobedeployedelsewhere.
KIME.ROWLAND/SAMARITAN’SPURSE
ThefieldhospitalthathasbeensetupinCremonaisofacustomizable
modelusedaroundtheworldfordisasterrelief.
KIME.ROWLAND/SAMARITAN’SPURSE
Cremona: Italy’sneedforhelpismoreurgentnowas
thousandsofinfectedmedicsareplacedinquarantine
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