Medical equipment gets a second life

MUNSTER | An ambulance sent from the United States to a hospital in Liberia appeared new and unused when Champ Merrick visited the hospital campus.

Almost.

"A hospital employee said, 'It was sent to us by someone in the U.S. They decided we needed an ambulance,' " Merrick recalls the employee telling him regarding the gift from a different organization than the one he runs. He shook his head. "The only time it was used was when the hospital administrator got married."

Merrick, the executive director of the Munster-based nonprofit Children of Abraham, won't send medical supplies to a facility across the globe if those supplies, like the ambulance in Liberia, will go unused.

Merrick's organization doesn't guess what hospitals around the world need. He asks.

"We try to get things to people who don't have them (but) need them," said Merrick, who sends the facilities an inventory list of what the nonprofit has, so the hospitals can select what they want. "We do the in-between thing."

Children of Abraham has been doing the in-between thing, providing more than $45 million in medical supplies to 30 countries since 2004, when the organization became incorporated. In a warehouse on Calumet Avenue, Merrick and the other volunteers sort the items that eventually will be sent to some of the world's neediest areas, free of charge. Merrick started the organization after the war in Iraq started, and he saw images of hospitals with nothing in them. He wanted to fix that.

The warehouse looks like a medical graveyard, where outdated medical equipment is prepped for a second life. Thousands of boxes create makeshift aisles along with random equipment donated by doctor's offices, hospitals and clinics -- equipment Merrick guesses otherwise would end up in a landfill. There are 100 refurbished microscopes and about 30 toilets and bed pans. There also are a barrel full of crutches and a sea of gurneys, plus X-ray boxes, dialysis machines and all the supplies to equip a dentist's office. The group, however, is short on wheelchairs at the moment.

Merrick jokes that the organization collects "just about anything and everything you use in a hospital." Some of the equipment may be outdated, but it's all still usable. And Merrick can tell you exactly where it all came from and, likely, where it's going.

Take, for example, the gurneys. Merrick is in touch with a doctor in Yemen, a graduate of Chicago's Rush University Medical Center, who works in a 400-bed hospital with only four gurneys.

"So we sent him a half a dozen," Merrick said.

Most Monday through Thursday afternoons, Merrick and other volunteers can be found in the warehouse, sorting and packing. Kathy Abdul, of Hammond, sits among myriad open boxes sorting the contents for an upcoming shipment. The former nurse jokingly said Merrick conned her into volunteering when she hurt her ankle a few years ago. She keeps coming back because she feels like she still gets to use her nursing skills.

The Children of Abraham isn't a religious organization and doesn't just provide supplies to church-affiliated hospitals, Merrick said. The only qualification is need, decided after determining what percentage of patients are charity patients.

"It's a common interest of all religions to help other people," he said.

And though Merrick has traveled with the shipments sometimes, he'd rather stay in the Munster warehouse.

"I do more good here than going over there," he said.