Treasure or Garbage?

The big metal doors open and the dry dusty air meets my nostrils. Boxes fill the shipping container to the brim. The frustrating sound of hundreds of individually packed syringes falling through the bottom of the broken box I hold in my hands is all too familiar. This has become my daily routine this past week at HEAL Africa.

The shipping container, that now acts as the keystone in the technical department structure at HEAL Africa, is full of medical supplies sent from Canada. My initial response to hearing that Canada was responsible for the medical supplies was pride. However now that I have had the responsibility of sifting and sorting through it all I am less than impressed, and actually more embarrassed. The supply consists of broken, outdated machines, and materials that have been expired for 10 years.

I would like to be the first person to say that I am being very harsh with my observation. There is a lot of great stuff that came in the container: orthopedic equipment and surgical gloves being the majority. Unfortunately the amount of expired, unusable goods, has cast a large shadow over the usable equipment.

Why do people think that our garbage can be some other person's treasure. This is not always the case, especially when equipment labeled "Unsafe!" or "Recall!" is in the mix. Something is not always better than nothing! In 2000, the WHO released 'Guidelines For Health Care Equipment Donations', one point jumped off the page to me, “if the quality of an item is unacceptable in the donor country, it is also unacceptable as a donation.”

It takes time and money in order to go through everything. Time and money that is valuable to an NGO.

There needs to be more thought put into what is sent overseas. I understand that it is time and cost consuming, but please take the time to thoughtfully fill it. I don't think I am the only one who would rather have to wait a long time for a full, useful container rather than having several semi-useful containers sitting on the already cramped HEAL Africa property. The useful equipment that has been collected will change how the hospital runs day to day, I just wish that the whole container could have had the same impact.

Sorting with my team.