During our first trip to St Lukes, we collected a large donation of medical supplies from a homecare organisation in Einhoven called Zuidzorg. We want to give a big thank you to Gijske van Alphen for organising this donation and meticulously packing the supplies to be used as soon as they were recieved by staff at St Luke’s National Medical Univesity Hospital in Lviv. Read her statement below.
After Boris came back from the Oekraine Embassy in London with a huge list of medical aid that was most needed there, I immediately felt the opportunity to help collecting this materials. I work as a nurse for homecare organisation Zuidzorg in Holland, in a wide area around the city of Eindhoven we work in 24 teams with 1000 employes to nurse people in their own homes. I know in every team there is always extra medical aid like wounddressings, bandages etc that are no longer used. Patients often give it to us when they no longer need it. So after asking permission from the staff of Zuidzorg I just send an email out to all the teams and asked them to collect medical supplies they could miss for the hospital in Lviv. The response was overwhelming, we received a lot of great materials!
Before I started packing I did some research on how to label and pack it. I contacted different organisations who are experienced in this sort of action. They told me the best thing to do was to sort as good as possible and exactly write on each box what is inside so in the hospital they can use it straight away. Also I needed to make a list with a overview of all the boxes.
With the help of my colleagues we spent a night sorting, labeling and packing the supplies. I was really surprised to see the amount of special active wound dressings like alginates, silver dressings, fibre dressings etc. that where brought together. When Boris came to collect the boxes I gave him that extra special box with this most expensive wound dressings, later he told me that the medical staff was excited about that box and took it straight away.
From the 42 boxes we filled there were 18 with absorbent wounddressings, compresses, bandages, plaster tape, ointments etc. 3 boxes were filled with syringes in different sizes, 1 box with needles, 2 boxes with materials for infusion, 1 box with nutrion drinks, 5 boxes with catheter materials, 2 boxes with sanitisers and alcohol, and the rest was filled with gloves, aprons and facemasks.
I am working hard to collect more medical aid for the next trip to Lviv.
Gijske van Alphen
Verpleegkundige MNT
Zuidzorg