Whether it's a half-dozen PCs from the Campbell law office of Abbott, Stringham and Lynch, or 10 times that number from the Santa Clara County Housing Authority, it's the "repeat business" that Dave Wald appreciates.
The Santa Clara mechanical engineer gathers donated computer and network equipment to ship to Cuba for use by doctors and other medical professionals.
He works with USA/Cuba InfoMed, a group of Bay Area volunteers dedicated to assisting InfoMed, Cuba's medical information network.
Volunteers test and repair PC equipment in workshops in Santa Clara and Oakland.
InfoMed celebrated its 10th anniversary in December. It received the Stockholm Challenge Award in 2002 for use of information technology for health, and has been lauded by the United Nations Development Program for its assistance to Third World countries.
The U.S. support project grew out of a 1994 trip to Havana by Dr. Juan Reardon. The Contra Costa County epidemiologist met public health professionals working with InfoMed, then a fledgling computer network with a node in each of Cuba's 14 provinces.
In May 1995, Dr. Reardon and Mr. Wald conferred in Havana with InfoMed's director and returned home, inspired to provide the 800 computers they learned were needed for use as terminals in medical school and hospital libraries.
They set to work obtaining computers, volunteers and donated work space. Getting the refurbished machines to Havana posed the next challenge.
The group decided to send 400 XTs on a 1996 Pastors for Peace humanitarian aid caravan, headed for Havana via Mexico as a challenge to the U.S. embargo.
Customs agents confiscated the equipment in a dramatic five-hour confrontation at the San Isidro border crossing. After a 94-day fast by five members of Pastors for Peace, the shipment was released and allowed to proceed to Havana.
After serious discussion of priorities, USA/Cuba InfoMed opted to obtain a humanitarian aid license from the U.S. Commerce Department and began sending cargo containers by rail to Montreal, then by ship, to Havana. Work parties - where some 500 PCs, monitors, peripherals and network equipment are put on pallets and loaded into a 40-foot cargo container - tend to be upbeat events.
"Saturday work sessions in our Oakland shop can be chaotic, but the plus side is the good spirits we share," says Dr. Reardon. "I have never heard so many bad jokes anywhere else."
Don Hill and systems engineer Francisco Rodriguez joined the project in mid-1995.
"I know nothing about the electrical stuff, so I specialize in building pallets," says Mr. Hill, a contract programmer for mainframe computers. "It's something I can do for Cuba."
Peter Bell got involved in the project through its Web site (http://www.cubasolidarity. net). An IT manager at a community health clinic in Fremont, he and Ed Biow of Oakland search the Web for good deals on repair parts and modems. They're called on to solve the more challenging repair problems.
When the volunteers in the Santa Clara shop run into technical difficulties, they call on Ray Dong, a former computer instructor at Foothill College in Los Altos, and Mike Willis, a streaming-video specialist.
Mr. Willis found USA/Cuba InfoMed listed in a Lonely Planet guidebook three years ago.
"I had a bit of curiosity about communist countries and figured my dot-com was about to go under," he says. It did, giving him a chance to participate as a Silicon Valley representative in a Havana seminar for Jamaican medical librarians.
Cuban technicians then set up an information network linking Jamaica's 19 hospitals.
"People often ask if we teach the Cubans how to plan and build networks, "says Mr. Wald. "But they need no outside instruction. They write their own software or use commonly available programs in Spanish.
"They lack nothing in know-how, just in material resources."
Raising funds to support the humanitarian effort will be even more important in the coming year, Mr. Wald says. "Our liability insurance on the workshops has nearly doubled, and shipping costs are sure to rise."
Shipping, the major expense, has been covered in the past by Cuban film showings at the Camera Theaters, checks from individual donors, and a $3,000 grant from a family foundation. (The project has 501(c) 3 tax-filing status.) No one receives a salary, and volunteers pay their own way on trips to Cuba.
Silicon Valley "InfoMedistas" chipped in to bring InfoMed director Pedro Urra here last spring to meet with informatics professionals at five universities.
"When René Villaló and Valentí González came from InfoMed a few years ago, the highlight of their trip was the Linux convention in San Jose," says Mr. Wald. "Valentí says it was for him 'like for a Catholic going to the Vatican.' "
InfoMed Havana uses Linux for its servers and hosts the Linux Cuba site at http://www.linux.cu.
"Our contributions over the years have had a significant impact on the ability of Cuba's InfoMed to expand its service beyond the medical libraries which received the first 800 computers," Mr. Wald says.
"But our aid so far has met only a tiny fraction of the needs of the 70,000-plus health professionals in Cuba."
With each new license application, we request a higher level of MTOPS [millions of theoretical operations per second] - a necessity for modern diagnostic techniques and for tracking patient progress."
He says InfoMed's work has the support of Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer and other members of Congress.
To donate Pentium-level personal computers or network equipment, make a tax-deductible contribution, volunteer or arrange for a speaker, contact Dave Wald or Dr. Juan Reardon at www.cubasolidarity.net.
