There are other success stories among charitable organizations dealing with medical equipment. The American Medical Resource Foundation, now in its 20th year, has donated more than $200 million worth of medical equipment to 90 countries within the last two years alone.

Afric-med USA, a Washington DC based NGO, aims at improving living standards developing countries in through improvements to health, education, employment and community development.


"The last couple of years we have been working with HIV patients in Cameroon. We had some donated equipment and we work with private hospitals and what we're doing is whenever we have medical equipment, we go to a clinic or hospital in Cameroon and set it up," said Charles Ntungwe, American Director of the organization.

The Global Ultrasound Equipment Donation Foundation is a not-for-profit organization providing ultrasound equipment and training to clinics, hospitals, and teaching facilities in developing nations.

Then there's the Hidaya Foundation, an organization that collects new and gently used items to help the poor and needy in South Asian countries and other parts of the world, as the need arises.

For those who want to help out locally, free medical clinics are popping up in many different cities and should be considered as potential recipients for unused medical supplies or equipment. In addition, home health agencies may accept unused medical supplies or medical equipment because they will often treat patients with no insurance coverage. These organizations actually depend on donations to treat the patients they see.

Everyone Can Help

While equipment donations are appreciated, it's often just as welcomed for a company to offer time and service to train those who will be operating the machines.




"We have donated equipment and have traveled to India to install and train engineers on how to maintain the equipment," said Boyd Campbell of the North Carolina-based Southeastern Biomedical Associates, Inc. "It was through the guys at PartsSource that we learned about the India Gospel League, and they were looking for technical expertise to help them with what little equipment they had up and running. When we got to looking at what they had and didn't have, we decided to donate enough monitoring equipment to comprise an eight bed ICU, a two bed emergency room and a labor and delivery department for them."

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