Awake In America Replaces Equipment To Treat Sleep Apnea Lost In Hurricane Ike

Main Category: Sleep / Sleep Disorders / Insomnia
Also Included In: Aid / Disasters
Article Date: 15 Sep 2008 - 4:00 PDT

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While victims of Hurricane Ike who have been diagnosed with sleep apnea need not worry about the many delays in replacing expensive durable medical equipment thanks to a disaster relief program operated by Awake In America, a national non-profit organization (501c3), based in Philadelphia, PA.

The extraordinary effort to provide aid directly to individuals who, prior to Hurricane Ike's landfall, had been diagnosed with sleep apnea and were being successfully treated with a CPAP or bi-level positive airway pressure device (xPAP) prior to Hurricane Ike destroying their homes, possessions, and in many cases, their xPAP equipment.

Sleep apnea is a sleep disorder often characterized by snoring, gasping for breath, or snorting while asleep. A person with sleep apnea stops breathing, sometimes for 90 seconds or longer, while asleep. When the person stops breathing, the heart continues to try to deliver oxygenated blood to the body, but without breathing. During this period, because the heart is working in overdrive and the blood, brain, and other organs are oxygen-deprived, the heart often goes into irregular heart rhythms. The brain, in an attempt to save itself, triggers the body to gasp, which causes the apnea the stop when the person wakes for a second or two.

Left untreated, sleep apnea can lead to many health issues, including diabetes, memory loss, sexual dysfunction, unexplained weight gain, greater risk of heart attack and stroke, greater risk of involvement in motor vehicle accidents, among others.

Operation Restore CPAP provides direct assistance to individuals who left their homes under emergency conditions as water filled their homes. Some of these individuals left their homes under the mandatory evacuation orders. Many of them, thinking this hurricane would be like other hurricanes, and that they'd be home in several hours, left their belongings behind.

Awake In America's Operation Restore CPAP is the only disaster relief program of its kind in the nation, assisting individuals who have been previously diagnosed with sleep apnea and had been using an xPAP device at the time of the disaster. The purpose of Operation Restore CPAP is to replace, at no-cost to the individual, CPAP or bi-level devices destroyed as a result of any disaster approved for inclusion in Operation Restore CPAP.

"We're hoping those hurricane victims with apnea will find the many battles for replacing homes, furniture, vehicles, and many other essentials of life a little easier because of our program," says Michele Narcavage, president of Awake In America. "By quickly replacing the CPAP or bi-level devices used by people with sleep apnea to treat this potentially life-threatening disorder, we're hoping to help these people -- victims of a major disaster -- get the proper sleep they need without risking their health or life."

Disasters approved for Operation Restore CPAP are listed in the Disaster section (http://AwakeInAmerica.info/disaster/) of Awake In America's site, where more information about the program may be found, and applications specific to the disaster may be downloaded.

Operation Restore CPAP is a streamlined version of Awake In America's xPAP Donation and Relief Program, which was established in late 2004, and to date, has helped more than 400 individuals around the United States.

Awake In America initially launched Operation Restore CPAP on September 3, 2005 -- one year and 11 days ago -- as a response to similar disaster: Hurricane Katrina (http://www.AwakeInAmerica.org/Katrina/). Since that time, the Operation Restore CPAP program has been used to assist individuals in several disasters.

Operation Restore CPAP is designed to be ready with little-to-no notice to meet the needs of apneics in need of equipment as a result of disasters.

Our needs for Operation Restore CPAP

To this end, Awake In America is in urgent need of need of the following types of donations to support Operation Restore CPAP:

-- Equipment
- tubing (six-foot and two-foot)
- nasal and full-face masks
- heated humidifiers with chambers

-- Cash donations (to help cover the shipping costs for all the equipment, as well as printing and shipping of materials to get information about the program into the hands of individuals in need of immediate assistance)

-- Grants from corporations, businesses, or government to support this program

Awake In America is a 501(c)(3) (national non-profit) organization, based in Philadelphia. Donations to Awake In America are tax-deductible to the fullest extent of the law, and donation receipts will be sent to all donors.

In making donations to this program, please be sure to write Operation Restore CPAP in the memo field on checks, or on boxes of equipment being sent. An online donation page has been established specifically for this project, and all donations from that page will automatically earmarked for Operation Restore CPAP. The page may be found here.If you are shipping equipment, a shipping label for your convenience has been uploaded in PDF format, ready for printing. It may be found http://awakeinamerica.info/download/23.

Online donations to Awake In America's Operation Restore CPAP may also be made through:
- Network for Good
- JustGive.com

Source:
Awake In America