MEDICAL SUPPLIES FOR IRAQ PACKING EVENT

Dear Friends:

A large and enthusiastic group of volunteers accomplished a huge amount on Saturday organizing the pallets of medical supplies at the Alalusi Foundation. The work was hard, but it felt great to realize how our labor will translate directly into real medical relief for the citizens of Iraq. We, as well as the foundation, want to let you know how much we appreciate the enormous effort. Much was achieved, but there is more to be done!

So – please mark your calendars for Saturday, Oct 4th and perhaps Sunday, from 9-5 at the warehouse in Hayward. We encourage all of you to invite your friends – we discovered on Saturday that anyone can be of help (although medical knowledge is a plus), and ideally we need about 70 people to participate. We also found that it is extremely useful to have some people with respiratory, operating room, or intensive care backgrounds.

We do need to know how many people are coming so that arrangements (lunch, carpooling, etc.) can be made for the expected turnout, so please RSVP by email to Dan Lowenstein at lowenstein [at] medsch.ucsf.edu. Let him know which day you (and friends) are coming – he will email everyone on Saturday night to verify whether we are still on for Sunday (likely).

To get a flavor of what the scene was like, please check out the photos posted by Cleavon Gilman at:

http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=41732&l=6beb7&id=712927392