Wildlife Carer Benefits from Medical Equipment Donations

Sue Moore has dedicated 20 years to wildlife care in Tarwin Lower, Victoria. Her work involves rehabilitating various animals, including koalas, echidnas, reptiles, and birds of prey. "I suppose the difficult part is, it's full-time, getting up in the middle of the night, feeding them and all that sort of stuff," she said. Moore often cares for orphaned animals, requiring her to feed them every four hours.

Currently, she is caring for a small male koala joey named Sonny, who was rescued after his mother was injured. "He's a little terror, so at night-time around about three o'clock, he starts making these noises and I've got to get up," Moore explained. She noted that Sonny climbs on her dressing gown during these late-night feedings.

Moore's work has been made easier thanks to donations from a charity called Medical Pantry. The organization has provided her shelter with essential medical supplies, including swabs, bandages, and an incubator that was previously used for pre-term babies at a Melbourne hospital. "I had a big koala that lost its temperature. We were able to put it into the humidicrib and bring its temperature back up," she said.

The Medical Pantry was founded by Dr. Martin Nguyen, who was an anaesthetist ten years ago. He discovered a significant amount of unused medical supplies during an equipment audit. "We did a waste audit of everything coming out of theatre and we catalogued everything, and just like a war on waste, we found there was a lot of unused medical supplies in there," he said.

While volunteering overseas, Nguyen noticed the stark contrast in medical supply availability. "These communities overseas were in desperate need, so when it first started, I was collecting these supplies, putting them in my backpack and going overseas and distributing them," he recalled.

Today, Medical Pantry connects suppliers of unused medical equipment with those in need, including wildlife shelters. The charity has over 130 partners both nationally and internationally. "What they do is they'll go online, just like an eBay where everything is free," Nguyen explained.

Nurse Lisa Harriet, who volunteers with Medical Pantry, helps prepare packages. She works as a neonatal nurse at Mercy Health, which recently donated ten neonatal incubators to the charity for wildlife clinics. "It's really nice to see that something that's helped these babies along their journey … and basically to survive … be given a second life and be used for something else," Harriet said.

The healthcare system is a significant contributor to landfill waste, accounting for seven percent of the country's greenhouse gas emissions, according to a 2018 study published in The Lancet. Nguyen noted that the high standards of the healthcare system lead to waste. "We have a healthcare system that is top-notch, that is on demand," he said.

Limited storage capacity often forces warehouses to discard supplies to make room for new ones. "That typically would normally go to landfill, but with the Medical Pantry, we're able to save that," Nguyen stated.

The charity has donated 15,000 tonnes of medical supplies, valued at approximately $200 million, from its warehouse in Yarraville. However, Nguyen expressed a desire to do more. "At the moment we're only saving about 5 percent of what is actually going to landfill that can be redistributed, and we want to be able to do that better by resourcing the charity," he said.