Charitable Mission of St. Louis Health Equipment Lending Program Extends Overseas
Behind the open door near a dumpster at the end of a bumpy road is a small office that leads to narrow rooms packed with wheelchairs, crutches, walkers, hospital beds and cardboard boxes stuffed with home health devices of almost every variety.
From this crowded space volunteers are helping orphaned children in Honduras, young mothers in Mexico, elderly women in Ecuador plus thousands of people who are disabled, sick or injured in St. Louis, southwestern Illinois and elsewhere.
It is the humble headquarters of the nonprofit St. Louis Health Equipment Lending Program (St. Louis HELP), a small organization with a big heart that freely loans revitalized home medical equipment to anyone at no cost.
In addition to impoverished people overseas, St. Louis HELP assists more than 5,400 people every year in metropolitan St. Louis who cannot afford the home medical equipment they desperately need.
“We collect home health items all year that people give us from their attics and basements, and we conduct area-wide equipment donation drives twice a year,” says Laura Cannon-Singer, who founded the organization in her garage in 2008 before moving to the crowded rented warehouse space in Olivette. The group also accepts donations of new equipment from device manufacturers and healthcare providers.
“Annually, we now collect about 11,000 items of donated equipment. We clean, recondition and revitalize it. Nothing goes to waste. Broken equipment parts are used for repairs. Broken wooden crutches are recycled to a wood chipper — What we can’t use, we recycle.”
Virtually every type of home medical device — manual and electric wheelchairs; scooters; walkers, crutches, canes; hospital beds; portable commodes; elevated toilet seats; lift chairs — and more — is accepted by St. Louis HELP and carefully reconditioned before being loaned for free for as long as people need it.
In 2015 St. Louis HELP loaned 5,570 home health equipment items and, in doing so, diverted about 150 tons of equipment from solid waste landfills. Part of this achievement involved directly assisting people in foreign nations and, also, sharing new and reconditioned equipment with partner charitable agencies.
“It is meaningful to know that, in our small way, we are helping to change peoples’ lives for the better in St. Louis or in some tiny village,” Cannon Singer says.
U.S. law regarding domestic re-use of some types of health equipment, including devices designed for single use, is a tangle of regulatory, medical, legal and economic issues. In dozens of foreign nations, however, the regulations for importing and re-using many types of medical devices are less strict than in the U.S.
For this reason, St. Louis HELP is able to directly and indirectly provide much-needed home health equipment to various foreign countries, and also to partner with global humanitarian organizations such as MedShare that distribute reusable medical equipment around the world.
In the Andes Mountains
Beth Hayes is a St. Louisan who lives in Quito, Ecuador. When she comes home to visit she loads trunks with equipment from St. Louis HELP and takes them to a remote clinic in Lago San Pablo in the Andes Mountains. Beth says:
“The Clinica de los Mayores (Elder Clinic) in Ecuador serves about 50 elderly people who have various illnesses and do not have family to care for them.
“Some eat only one meal a day, if that. Some are unable to walk and must depend on someone bringing them things to or carry them to where they need to go. The clinic provides some meals, basic medical care such as wound care, some medicines, and monitors diabetes and other conditions.
“St. Louis HELP has been a wonderful resource by donating walkers, canes, wound care materials, hearing aids, glucose monitors and other items. The clinic workers, the patients and I are so very, very grateful! It means so much to those who have so little and are mostly alone to know that someone, somewhere really does care. On behalf of our group of elderly Andean Indians and dedicated volunteers, a very big thank you for your support and the great work St. Louis HELP is doing!”
St. Louis HELP also indirectly assists children and adults in Catacamas, Honduras, by donating medical devices to a team of physicians at St. Louis Children’s Hospital that travels to Honduras every year to treat adult and pediatric patients.
Here is a note that St. Louis HELP recently received from Joan Downey MD, MPH, who is an assistant professor of pediatrics at St. Louis Children’s Hospital:
“I want to thank you for the generous donation of nebulizers and the finger oxymeters. They are very much appreciated by our Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children’s Hospital health care providers.
“We leave next Saturday with a subspecialty team of 30 and will be seeing both Adult and Pediatric patients referred for Pulmonary, Cardiac, Neurologic and GI problems…We anticipate seeing ~800–1000 pulmonary patients in a week and the equipment you provided will be incredibly important in taking care of the main pulmonary problem in Honduras which is Asthma.
“Thank you for considering us in collecting nebulizers and portable oxymeters (hospital size or finger size). I am happy to pick them up periodically as often as you are able to donate.”
Helping So Many
“It touches us to know that our equipment is being used to help sick or injured children and adults, senior citizens, cancer patients and people with disabilities,” says Cannon Singer. “That’s why we do it.”
She works with skilled volunteers and a handful of paid workers at St. Louis HELP’s warehouse with tall doors opening to a back alley where equipment is loaded and unloaded. The 5,000 square foot space got so full of equipment last September that it had to be expanded by 2,000 square — requests for free loans of home medical equipment from the group increased 21.1 percent over those in 2014.
“We are helping hundreds of people every month,” Cannon Singer says. “And we are constantly looking donations of new and previously used home health equipment and, yes, financial donations.”
All donations of home health equipment and any financial donations to St. Louis HELP are tax deductible.
As a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, St. Louis HELP loans equipment to anyone who needs it, including people awaiting insurance company approval; those whose own equipment is being repaired; visitors to St. Louis who can’t transport their own home health equipment; and terminally ill persons.
To get free loans of home health equipment or to donate health equipment you don’t need, call St. Louis HELP at 314.567.4700 or see the website http://www.stlhelp.org.
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