In mid-October Rotary Keilor East helped organise and carry out a major inter-club project to fill and load a 40ft container of dental and health materials for Tonga. The island state is still recovering from the massive Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai under-sea volcano eruption and tsunami two years ago.
The materials shipment was done through Donations In Kind Inc. (DIK) at Footscray West, which we sponsor. We also provided $500 to get materials to the most remote of Tongan islands, called “Tin Can Island” because it originally could be supplied only by ships dropping materials offshore to be rescued by canoes and swimmers.
RC Ballarat West leads the Tonga project. Rotary's consortium is converting a derelict building at Tonga College to a fully-equipped 14-bed medical ward and four-chair complete dental clinic. The chairs were donated by Royal Melbourne Dental Hospital. Our club helped load these chairs shrink-wrapped on their pallets complete with operating manuals.
The project has been approved at high level by the Tongan government and World Bank, which is converting the school take boarders. Ex-students and Tongan citizens have raised an impressive $A8m for this work. Upgrades include sterilising and stock rooms and a nurse’s room. Staffing is via a central Tongan roster. On high ground, the facility will also double as an emergency evacuation centre in the event of future eruptions, cyclones or epidemics.
The container will go to sea in late October and the planned opening of the centre is for mid-December.
