By JIM KELLY
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
For hospitals in Canada, it's a worthless piece of junk. For hospitals
in Cuba, it's priceless.
The 1995 Shimatzu fluoroscopic X-ray machine that St. Joseph's Care
Group is donating to Cuba uses technology that is no longer
state-of-the-art in Canada.
Medical Equipment Modernization Opportunity (MEMO) president Dr. Jerome
Harvey said Tuesday that if the X-ray machine wasn't sent to Cuba, it
would be relegated to the scrap yard.
MEMO is a group of volunteers who acquire, remove, pack, ship, reinstall
equipment to support two hospitals in the Villa Clara province of Cuba.
The hospitals are in desperate need of modernization, said Harvey. The
equipment comes from hospitals, homes for aged and other health care
agencies.
Technicians were busily dismantling the machine Tuesday at St. Joseph's
Hospital while reporters and photographers looked on.
Once in Cuba the parts will be put back together and the machine will be
used at the Villa Clara Provincial Cancer Centre to diagnose stomach and
bowel cancer.
"If you can believe it, they have a cancer centre without the ability to
diagnose bowel cancer," Harvey said.
"So this will be a real life-saving machine."
He said his group has sent 34 ocean containers of hospital equipment and
supplies worth $25 million to Cuba since August 2004.
Included in those shipments were three similar machines to the one being
sent now. Two came from the former Port Arthur General Hospital while a
third, to be used for parts, came from Rankin Inlet.
While Cuba will benefit, so will Thunder Bay, he said.
"All that stuff (previously shipped to Cuba) would have ended up in the
landfill or the scrap yard, so it's a very environmentally friendly
thing that St. Joseph's is doing," he said.
St. Joseph's Care Group president and chief executive officer Tracy
Buckler agreed.
"It's also a nice environmentally friendly way to get rid of some of our
old surplus equipment that we're not using anymore," she said.
Buckler said all diagnostic equipment used by St. Joseph's Hospital is
digital and computerized.
She said the Cubans have done a good job of upgrading health care
equipment, with help from Canada.
While the cost of shipping one container is about $7,000, it has cost
about $245,000 to ship 35, and Harvey said the money comes from generous
Canadians "just like you."
He said MEMO gets no government funding.
Chronicle Journal - Stories - (2 September 2009)
http://www.chroniclejournal.com/stories_local.php?id=208795
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