Book Description

The donation of used medical equipment and excess medical supplies is promoted by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as delivering needed goods to provide healthcare to the developing world. The reality is that much of what is received is broken, obsolete or inappropriate. Medical devices manufacturing today focuses on high technology medical diagnostic equipment that must be considered as electronic waste (e-waste) at the end of its useful life cycle. These "donations" have financial and environmental costs associated with them that are paid for by the recipient organizations and the citizens of the receiving countries. The research question posed by this thesis was: How to create a policy or tool that will give developing countries and recipient organizations the ability to prevent the flow of donated used medical equipment from ending up in their landfills? The literature review uses the theoretical framework of neoliberalism to explain the rise of NGOs taking the place of government and the resulting depoliticization of the public good. The notion that donated used medical equipment maintains its status of being life saving at the end of its life cycle is deconstructed through an examination of how neoliberal capitalist ideology of privatization, globalization, and free markets externalize disposal costs and environmental damage to the marginalized Other. The author concludes that donation is a discourse of power that marginalizes recipients due to their lack of choice in types of donations received, condition of received items, and the externalization of disposal costs to the recipients. Issues related to the psychology of giving and its emotional benefits for donors are reviewed and discussed. An examination of the environmental and health problems associated with disposal/recycling of e-waste and the neurotoxins contained in them is explained and why end of life cycle high tech medical equipment is life threatening. The thesis offers a proposed methodology of a benefit cost analysis tool (MED BCA) that incorporates natural resource damage assessment costs as an objective tool that will allow recipient countries and organizations to assess the costs versus the benefit value of medical equipment donations that includes their end of life disposal costs to the environment.