After shipping several thousand mobile medical containers to Ghana in recent years, a Topeka-based company is sending its first portable medical units to Haiti.

And according to Topekan Tom Petersen, who serves as president and CEO of the business, those units should help with COVID-19 testing and vaccination efforts there.

"We're talking about countries where people have no access to health care," Petersen said. "In Ghana, there are 2,700 doctors for 30 million people, and we probably have that many doctors in Topeka. So it's a challenge for these countries to secure a location for immunizations, for vaccinations, for blood testing."

The company attempting to address that challenge is Primary Mobile Med International. Founded by Petersen, Primary Mobile Med works with countries, charitable foundations and hospital groups to provide portable medical containers to underserved and disaster-stricken areas.

And Haiti is the latest country to benefit from such efforts.

"There are a lot of people that have been watching this, a lot of medical people in Topeka," Petersen said.

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His company's medical units are created by equipping shipping containers with a variety of basic medical supplies. Because the equipped shipping containers are easily transportable by truck, train, boat or airplane, they are able to be placed in poor, rural areas where brick-and-mortar medical clinics are scarce, or even nonexistent.

"The containers provide a health care clinic, just as you would go to a clinic in Topeka," Petersen said. "It can do just about everything except for general anesthesia."

The containers aren't perfect, he added, but they are efficient and even have specialized software to keep track of the medical records of those who visit.

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"There's an ID badge machine in the clinic," Petersen said, "that will print out information for the person being treated. And they can wear that around their neck and go back to the clinic and be identified because their medical records are kept."

According to Petersen, the containers cost anywhere from $45,000 to $65,000 to assemble, based on the medical equipment put in each one. The one heading to Haiti is on the lower end of that cost spectrum.

Such containers are typically funded by individuals willing to contribute to the cause. Petersen said Primary Mobile Med has also tried to work with such organizations as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and The Rockefeller Foundation, as well as pharmaceutical companies and hospital groups, to secure the money necessary to equip units with supplies.

The container bound for Haiti left Topeka about a week ago. Petersen said a trucking company based out of Sabetha drove the container to Miami, where it was set to be transported to the Caribbean country by boat.

But he doesn't expect that to be the only container Primary Mobile Med sends. They are preparing to equip six to eight more, he said, as funding becomes available.

"We understand they have at least six locations where they want clinics in Haiti," Petersen said. "They have people on the ground who will operate the clinics and provide primary health care."

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According to Petersen, the Haiti operation was made possible by Mary Brownback. She got him in touch with one of her neighbors in Washington, D.C., who is working in Haiti through a nonprofit.

"I was just talking with him, and he was talking about working in Haiti and how they needed medical stuff," Brownback said. "I thought of Tom and what he does with the containers. So I put him in touch."

Brownback said she was happy to make the connection, as she believes in the mission of Primary Mobile Med and in the work Petersen and his team are doing.

"A medical container like this could be so helpful in so many places," she said. "I think the people of Haiti will be appreciative of it."

According to Petersen, it is nice to be shipping within the same hemisphere. He thinks the containers will make a difference in Haiti, especially as the coronavirus pandemic continues.

"The nice thing about the shipping containers," he said, "is that they could go in on a temporary basis, say for one year, so that children can get their booster shots within the year's time. And while that's going on, they could build a brick-and-mortar location and then relocate the container as a satellite (clinic)."

And the same could be true, he added, for COVID-19 vaccinations — when they become more widely available.