DENVER—A Boulder hospital’s heart-catheter machine that was likely headed for a landfill is getting a new life in Ethiopia, where it will become part of a new pediatric cardiac center.
On Friday, the medical relief organization Project CURE loaded up the cardiac catheterization lab, plus three 40-foot containers of $1.5 million worth of medical supplies and equipment to be shipped.
Boulder Community Hospital was planning to retire the $1 million cath lab for new all-digital equipment. It could have traded it in for a discount on the new equipment, but the hospital decided to donate it to Project CURE’s medical relief efforts instead.
Project CURE—for Commission on Urgent Relief & Equipment—is based in Centennial. It gathers medical supplies and equipment and donates them to developing countries.
The organization said more than 120,000 Ethiopian children under the age of 15 suffer from congenital heart defects, but available care is limited. With the per capita income of Ethiopia at about $100 a year, few can afford to travel internationally for treatment.
Though Boulder Community Hospital could’ve gotten a discount from trading in its old equipment, the cath lab would’ve languished in a scrap heap, said Darryl Brown, a director at the hospital.
Instead the hospital agreed to spend extra money disassembling the equipment so it could be reused in Ethiopia.
“It’s so much less wasteful. It has plenty of useful life on it,” Brown said. “Yeah, it might have cost us a little bit more to do it, but someone else is going to have a huge benefit.”
A grant will help Project CURE cover $23,000 in costs for storing and shipping the equipment from the U.S. to Djibouti in Africa. The Children’s Heart Fund of Ethiopia was covering costs to take the equipment to neighboring Ethiopia.
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