Donating Medical Supplies to Ecuador

[Guest dimaEMT]

EMT Bravo Members,

My name is Dima Raskolnikov and I’m an EMT with the Chappaqua Volunteer Ambulance Corps. I’m posting because I’d like to gauge your interest in helping me with a project that I’d like to undertake for this coming December and January.

For my college’s winter break, I’m traveling to Quito, Ecuador, to volunteer in a clinic for the poor. The medical conditions in Ecuador are nothing like what we enjoy here – sterile supplies basically don’t exist, and those that do are reused to the point of breaking. Even basic things like nonrebreathers are reused dozens if not hundreds of times.

I know that some of the departments in our area already donate unused or expired supplies to communities in other countries that need them. If yours doesn’t and you think that you could donate some medical supplies to this cause, I (and of course the patients) would greatly appreciate it. I would like to get a large package or two together and bring them to Ecuador on my flight and donate them to the clinic where I’ll volunteer.

I’m currently working on collecting the contact information of local VACs so that I can ask them if they’d like to help. If you’re in a fire department with lots of medical supplies or know that your VAC's contact information is hard to find online, please contact me. If you have any other ideas for how I could go about doing this, also please let me know.

Thanks for your help,

Dima