A 40-foot container with a $100,000 worth of medical supplies will be leaving Tampa on Friday. It's headed to Turkey, where it will then be distributed to field hospitals inside Syria that treat refugees and others.
USF student Noor Shakfeh, a Syrian-American, is collaborating with the non-profit Advocates for World Health (AWH) to bring a container with medical supplies, like dialysis and ventilator machines, to the Syrian American Medical Society.
Surplus medical supplies, which otherwise would be discarded, were collected from a network of Florida hospitals and local private donors funded the project.
Shakfeh started the project after she learned a doctor in Syria only had one half-working dialysis machine.
"There are people in Syria who are suffering and they're suffering in ways that cannot really be described," she said, "and are not humane, and are not fair and should not be happening in the 21st century."
No more supplies are needed for this container, but AWH welcomes volunteers. AWH hopes to send four more containers this year.
