Recently Curans Heart Centre donated two state of the art ultrasound machines to Thunder Bay’s Medical Equipment Modernization Opportunity (MEMO). Curans (Caring) Heart Centre provides Thunder Bay District cardiac patients with preventative, diagnostic and treatment care by their roster of cardiologists and technicians. Though these machines are still “state of the art” there are now even more sophisticated machines available. In keeping with Curans’ policy of providing only the best cardiac care, these donated machines have now been replaced by the latest ultrasound technology.
MEMO works in collaboration with Dr. Ray Markham, professor of medicine at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Markham also volunteers in Zimbabwe’s National Medical school in the capital city of Harare. ZIMCAN, his Canadian registered charity’s purpose is to improve medical education of doctors, nurses and medical technicians in Zimbabwe. The donated ultrasound machines will be used at the University of Zimbabwe’s medical school for training medical students in cardiology. Zimbabwe has only 3500 doctors for a population of 15 million people so training new doctors is critical.
These used machines would sell on the open market in Canada for $30,000.00, a huge expense for Zimbabwe’s health care. Ontario spends about 43% of its budget on health care. Zimbabwe spends about 2% on health care and last year the minister of health was arrested for embezzlement! So, these echocardiograph machines will be a huge improvement in training Zimbabwe’s student doctors.
The machines will be shipped to Zimbabwe in June in a 40’ ocean container by truck to Toronto, by train to Montreal, ship to Mozambique and finally by train to Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe. The cost to ship a 40’ container to Zimbabwe is $30,000. MEMO has no corporate or government sponsorship and is supported entirely by generous Canadians. We have no paid employees so every cent goes to the project. At present we have $4000 toward the cost of shipping. If you would like to contribute to this shipping project, click on “Donate”.
Once again Thunder Bay demonstrates its generous heart by caring for not just the local community but also the global community.
Jerome Harvey