Towards the end of last year, Dr. Desmond Yip, a medical oncologist from Canberra Hospital, reached out to us with a very generous proposition. He’d come across our organisation on the back of a label on a bottle of Quincey Sparkling Quince and Apple Juice when cycling through Gippsland two weeks before and had had an idea.

His public hospital was in the middle of an equipment replacement cycle, decommissioning 1000 intravenous infusion pumps as well as 500 syringe drivers. They’d been regularly serviced and refurbished and instead of dismantling them and disposing of them as electronic waste, Dr. Yip wanted to know if we’d be interested in taking any of them for Vanuatu.

Syringe drivers are small, battery-operated devices used in hospitals to deliver medications continuously in a controlled manner over a set period of time. Due to their precise drug delivery, they are usually used in palliative care, intensive care and paediatrics. Syringe drivers ensure accurate dosing, reduce manual intervention and enhance patient safety, particularly for those requiring critical care. They will be utilised in Port Vila Hospital across several departments, but most notably in the ICU and Neonatal ICU.

Chair of the Clinical Oncology Society of Australia Global Oncology Group, Dr. Yip has been involved in global oncology projects in the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea, so is familiar with the particular healthcare challenges faced by Pacific Island nations.

After doing some research and communicating with our partners at Vila Central Hospital, we were only too happy to take some of them off his hands.

An enormous thanks to Dr. Yip and the oncology team at Canberra Hospital for their foresight, and also the hospital’s biomedical team who serviced and packed the equipment tightly for us to send on to Vila Central Hospital.

The equipment donated by Canberra Hospital is now en route to Vanuatu, kindly shipped to us in Bannockburn by ACT residents and friends of the foundation Dennis and Gaetan Obst and then onto Vila by our partner Kalgin Global Logistics.

Who’d have thought a bottle of fizzy fruit juice would lead to something like this!