Greetings all. Allow me to wade into this controversy. I am a foreigner-Canadian. We run into this disposal issue on a regular basis. I do find it somewhat interesting that in Canada as in the UK, legal eagles advise disposal and hospitals take notice until they are able to generate some funds and then the legal concerns go away. I cannot speak for the in-country used equipment dealers but for groups/charities such as the one I am employed by, the chance of being sued by a developing nation for used hospital equipment is approx 0. Here are the reasons why. A hospital in a developing nation that requests equipment is almost always a charity or mission hospital. The groups that send it are most often a charity. They should be testing the equipment. In that case they have put their service into the machine. The identification of the original owner must be removed. Patients who seek treatment in a mission hospital are not going to sue someone, period. They do not have the resources, it would be culturally offensive to bite the hand that helps and all legal action would have to be in an international court. Do the legal eagles or the beureaucraticaly paranoid ever think about this? The landfills do not need more material. It is much better to send it to assist people less fortunate than ourselves than to scrap it. In Canada most hospitals choose to ignore the liability. Since it is basically non-existent that makes sense. We do deal with hospitals that refuse to donate. We have repeatedly verbally been informed by government representatives that even though we contravene Canadian law they are not interested in prosecuting. They have bigger fish to fry and they support what we are doing. Of course this will not come in writing and apparently the lawmakers have more important things to do as well. So we will continue. I would urge everyone concerned about this issue to locate a responsible organization that checks and donates equipment to developing nations and send the unwanted equipment their way. It is cheaper to ship it to them, as parts if need be, than to destroy and send to a landfill. Thanks for taking the time to read this rant. Hopefully it is helpful.
One hospital has discovered that classifying equipment as parts only has passed the legal requirements. You can also remove all identifcation linking the equipment to your facility.
