SOS Wins St Vincent's Health Award
St Vincent’s Private Hospital Northside Clinical Nurse Claire Lane recently won the 2022 St Vincent’s Health Australia Individual Award for a simple yet very impactful idea.
Claire Lane founded Save Our Medical Supplies (SOS) in 2012 after witnessing the extreme wastage of clean medical supplies that no longer met Australian standards. SOS provides clean collection bins for staff to put supplies into, then they are picked up and sorted by Claire and her volunteers. From here, they are then sent on shipping containers to developing nations.
“In 2021, we prevented 1.2 million dollars’ worth of useable medical supplies from being sent to landfill. Instead, they were sent to where they were needed,” Claire said. "We've sent supplies all over the globe, from East Timor to Ukraine, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Cambodia, Ethiopia and many more. During the Australian bushfires, we also redirected supples to wildlife charities.”
SOS sent 13 pallets of hospital grade disinfectant to Lismore to help combat the mould outbreak and have also completely stocked a rural health and maternity clinic in Papua New Guinea.
Claire hopes to have an SOS bin in every Australian hospital to ensure nothing usable can be wasted.
Read more about the award here.
