Additional supplies to include with the equipment

When donating equipment, it’s vital that you consider the long term usage of the equipment and include in the donation the supplies needed to use and maintain the equipment.

The quantities included should ideally cover an agreed period of time – which you can discuss with the receiving hospital. A minimum of two years is generally recommended.

Even if you are importing the main equipment, it might be more appropriate to source some of the supplies separately in the receiving country.

Supplies that require specialised shipping should be sourced locally if possible, for example: lithium batteries, laboratory reagents, or x-ray film developer.

Here is a non exhaustive checklist of supplies that you should include:

• User manuals
• Service manuals
• Accessories (e.g. ultrasound probes)
• Consumables (e.g. paper to be used with an ultrasound machine)
• Reagents (e.g. x-ray film developer)
• Maintenance materials (e.g. commonly used spare parts, and any tools or test equipment required to maintain the equipment that the receiving institution does not have).
• Any electrical equipment required to adapt the equipment to the receiving institution’s infrastructure.

Talking point

What other things would you add on to the checklist above, that you think would be important for the checklist? Have you ever come across any useful checklists that you could share here?