CLEVELAND, Ohio — When Dr. Lee Ponsky was in college, he spent a summer working as a surgical assistant at a medical compound in Nigeria.
He remembers making suture material out of fishing line, and that someone filled gloves with water every morning to ensure they were free of holes and could be reused.
“It was there where I really opened my eyes to what the needs are,” said Ponsky, now 38 and chief of the division of urologic oncology at Cleveland’s University Hospitals. “It showed me what having nothing really meant.”
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And it got him thinking about medical supplies that are thrown away on a regular basis in the United States – not because they’re defective, but because they’re phased out or replaced by newer equipment.
In 1993, between college and medical school at Case Western Reserve University, Ponsky set up a nonprofit organization, now known as medWish International, to collect those supplies and get them to developing countries or countries hit by natural disasters. It has grown to the point that this year it could collect 400 tons of medical supplies for clinics across the globe.
Said Ponsky: “I had no strategic plan, no business plan, no dreams of what it would become.”
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He didn’t have a budget or a staff, either. Until 2001, medWish relied exclusively on volunteers, Ponsky said. People would fill duffel bags with gauze and rubber gloves, and bring them on medical trips.
People still carry supplies by hand. This month, more than 50 medWish volunteers traveled to El Salvador, where they provided basic medical and dental care to more than 1,500 patients. But for the past few years, medWish has complemented those efforts with a commitment to packing 40-foot containers with supplies and equipment.
“We made a decision to fill clinics, rather than just suitcases,” said Tish Dahlby, medWish’s executive director.
Prior to that decision, medWish recovered medical supplies and equipment in the tens of thousands of pounds. This year, the organization is on track to divert 800,000 pounds from being deposited in landfills.
Another goal for 2009 is to fill 40 containers with everything from masks and feeding tubes to exam tables and mammography machines.
“It’s such a critical program,” said Dahlby, who noted medWish collaborates with the MedSurplus Network, a nationwide alliance of nonprofit groups with similar missions. “We are, in essence, a safety net for people in other parts of the world who have no safety net.”
Hospitals, health-care facilities and medical supply companies in Cleveland, Columbus and Dayton contribute products to medWish. Ponsky said they are eager to participate in something that is environmentally sound, “not to mention the fact that we’re helping save lives.”
Some donors have heightened their efforts over the years. Case in point: The Cleveland Clinic health system turned over more than 220,000 pounds of supplies last year – up from about 80,000 pounds in 2007, according to Elizabeth Fiordalis, a community outreach director at the Clinic. For $1 a year, the Clinic also provides medWish with 38,000 square-feet of warehouse space.
Tom Ryan, who has traveled seven times to Syria with a cardiac surgery team, said the warehouse is “like a Wal-Mart for people going on medical missions. Almost anything you can imagine is in there some place.”
Ryan, who as a perfusionist operates heart and lung equipment, said he and his colleagues recently secured such a device through medWish, which prompted them to start filling a 40-foot container with other items, including crutches, walkers and manual-crank beds. Ryan said he hopes the container will be Syria-bound before October, with the help of an organization that volunteered to pay the shipping costs, which medWish does not cover.
By the end of this year, medWish will have distributed more than 1 million pounds of medical supplies and equipment to more than 80 countries.
“There’s no telling how many people have been helped by medWish,” Dahlby said. “We’ve improved their lives vastly with things that were going to be thrown away.”
[medWish images courtesy of Stephanie Jansky and medWish International]
