Hello everyone. I’m a full time missionary from North Carolina living in San Bartolome Milpas Altas, Guatemala. I serve in a children’s home (casaaleluya.org) where 300 children who are abused, abandoned, orphaned, or extremely impoverished live. We have a small dorm of children who have chronic kidney failure and require peritoneal dialysis. I’m the coordinator of a new 3-story dorm ( complete by Fall of 2018 ) that can accommodate up to 30 children on peritoneal dialysis. We are in the process of reaching out to corporations, hospitals, and generous people who are willing to donate home peritoneal dialysis machines and/or supplies. If you are interested in helping our ministry, please feel free to respond to this post or email me at casaantoni.guatemala@gmail.com. Thanks so much for reading this post!
I will share your email with PD patients and/or family members of patients who were on PD. Where would supplies need to be shipped? Would you expect people to pay to ship supplies there?
I just learned that the FDA discourages individuals from donating drugs or medical supplies even to humanitarian organizations outside the U.S. Here’s a FAQ that describes the limits. https://www.fda.gov/downloads/NewsEvents/PublicHealthFocus/UCM249617.pdf
Thanks so much for sharing my post. Our ministry is more concerned with home PD machines ( prefer Baxter) than medicine. We do have a US office to ship supplies. People would be able to carry a machine in a suitcase to Guatemala. We spend around $800-900 per month to rent this machine. If it breaks, the Baxter warehouse in Guatemla City sends this machine to Columbia,South America and we are without a machine for around one month. The large majority of the machines would be back up but we are open to receive as many as possible. I think international relief efforts are a little different than our ministry. We have been in Guatemala for the past 29 years and will continue to need dialysis equipment and supplies. Thanks again for your help!
PD machines used by patients in the U.S. are not owned by those patients. They are provided by the dialysis clinic for the patient’s use as long as the patient needs a PD cycler. The machine is to be returned when no longer needed.
One of the patients in the Home Dialysis Central Facebook group suggested that you contact the large dialysis companies to see if they have equipment they would donate to your organization for this use. I don’t know what they usually do when they upgrade their equipment, but that sounded like a good suggestion. The two largest dialysis companies in the US are Fresenius and DaVita:
Fresenius contact info - https://fmcna.com/contact/
DaVita Bridge of Life contact to request assistance - https://www.bridgeoflifeinternational.org/request-assistance/kidney-care-partners/
There are several nonprofit dialysis companies that might have used equipment to donate. Here’s an organization of nonprofit dialysis companies: http://www.nonprofitkidneycare.org/:
I found this resource from the World Health Organization called Medical Device Donations: Consideration for Solicitation and Provision that might be helpful.
Thank you so much for all of your help and time researching this material. This is very useful information. A group from DaVita Bridge to Life is in Guatemala this week and they are coming to meet with us and visit our new dorm on Saturday!!
I saw that the Bridge of Life works with folks in Guatemala. I’m glad that they’re meeting with you. Let us know the outcome…
We had a great meeting with Bridge of Life. They are a great non profit and willing to help us in the near future. Thanks so much for your help!
This is great news! Thank you for all you do for the children of Guatemala.