Western Baptist donates supplies to Haitian medical mission

    Western Baptist chief operating officer Scott Ware presents supplies to Paducah native Paul Mazzone for Haiti medical mission.

Western Baptist Hospital donated almost 100 pounds of medical supplies today to Paducah native Paul Mazzone to take to Haiti later this week with a medical team.

“It’s a terrible disaster in Haiti, and we’re glad to be able to contribute to the earthquake relief effort,” said Scott Ware, Western Baptist’s chief operating officer. “We’re happy Paul is going and representing our community. We can be here in Paducah and still be a part of the relief effort there.”

 The hospital donated 1,025 doses of injectable items, mostly antibiotics and anesthetics for surgical procedures; 7,860 doses of oral antibiotics and antifungal drugs; enough eye drops to treat more than 140 eye infections and enough topical antibiotics to treat approximately 1,500 skin infections, according to Barry Eadens, Western Baptist pharmacy director.

Mazzone, 24, a 2003 graduate of Paducah Tilghman High School, is an emergency room technician at Roper Hospital in Charleston, S.C. The son of Mike and Darlene Mazzone of Paducah, he graduated with a degree in biochemistry from the College of Charleston in 2007. Mazzone worked in radiology transport at Western Baptist in the summer of 2003.

“I was really amazed that on such short notice there was such an outpouring of support from the community,” said Mazzone, who collected about $1,000 from family and friends. “I talked to a member of our group and told him I was picking up 100 pounds of donated drugs, and he was a little taken aback by it. I told him that’s the value of living in a supportive community. I’m very proud to represent Paducah and Western Baptist and deliver this significant contribution they’ve made."

Mazzone will leave Thursday and stay about two weeks. The group will work about 60 miles northeast of Port au Prince in a clinic in Thomassique and a nearby hospital in Hinche. The mission is sponsored by Medical Missionaries, a non-profit organization in Manassas, Va., representing 200 doctors, nurses, dentists and others.

International service is not new to Mazzone. In college, he did an internship in Dresden, Germany, and worked on a research project in collaboration with the University of Oslo, Norway. In 2008, he worked six months with a non-profit group in Hue, Vietnam, to improve the education of children. He spent the next eight months working in a vegan reforestation community in southern India.