Hospital Beds Go To Ukraine

Since the full-scale assault and invasion of Ukraine on February 24th, there has been a huge increase in the demand for hospital equipment to deal with the current and expected casualties from the conflict. This demand comes from within Ukraine itself and also from those counties that border with Ukraine as they are witnessing a massive influx of refugees from the conflict.

In January of this year Beechfield Healthcare began the replacement of the existing bed and mattress fleet of over 500 beds in Tallaght University Hospital (TUH). A contractual obligation in the contract was the removal and safe disposal of the bed and mattress fleet. We decided to recycle the bed and mattress fleet by working with a charity that specialises in upcycling hospital equipment and distributing that equipment to hospitals in need. These hospitals are generally poorly resourced and are frequently challenged by a lack of medical equipment.

James Gargan, commercial director at Beechfield Healthcare, said, “We were fortunate enough to win the contract to replace the TUH bed and mattress fleet. As part of the contract implementation, it is our responsibility to remove the existing bed and mattress stock. We were aware of a charity that supplies hospital equipment to under resourced hospitals in undeveloped nations, so we could see there was far more value in giving them a new lease of life in a hospital that was in need.”

This week, and for weeks to come, our recycled bed and mattress stock is on its way to a location in Poland, close to the Ukrainian border, where there is an urgent appeal for all types of hospital equipment.

Gargan adds, “Donated equipment can have a significant positive impact on the quality of care delivered. This contribution will provide much needed beds and mattresses to enable frontline health care staff to maintain the required delivery of care to those unfortunate casualties of the conflict. A week ago, we were moving beds and mattresses to be loaded onto the container and little did we know what was about to happen, and that the beds would be needed so quickly to help deal with an unfolding humanitarian crisis.”