ABERDEEN, Sask. – Rows of metal beds and vinyl-skinned mattresses are piled to the rafters of Art Lane’s farm shed.
The beds are castoffs from Saskatchewan hospitals and nursing homes and are bound for medical facilities in Burundi as part of a Canadian Food for the Hungry International project.
Lane said a switch to electric, patient-controlled beds has meant a surplus of equipment that probably would end up in metal scrap yards. The organization also collects other discarded medical items such as infant weight scales.
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Art and his wife, Elaine, have seen the need for food and hospital aid first hand while volunteering on medical construction jobs in Haiti.
“I understand what it’s like in the Third World, to have nothing,” said Lane, who recalled five doctors and one hospital serving 15,000 people in Haiti.
Family members often sleep beneath the patient’s bed to feed and care for the sick.
The Lanes have also worked with the homeless in Hawaii, where there is a lack of affordable housing for native Hawaiians, and have donated crop to the Canadian Foodgrains Bank.
“It’s really rewarding,” Lane said. “It gives me a great feeling to play a small part and have a tremendous effect on someone.”
They are storing 450 mattresses and 150 beds in the farm shed, which also houses two John Deere tractors.
The Lanes have retired from farming but continue to live on their land near Aberdeen and remain involved in community service work.
Beds are stored at the Lane farm and other farms in addition to the Canadian Food for the Hungry’s warehouse in Saskatoon.
They will be shipped within the next 18 months, with help from volunteers who have offered to clean and move the beds and from a rental company that has donated the use of vehicles.
Just a short drive away from the Lanes, another 200 beds are neatly stacked on one side of an oversized farm shed owned by Jacqueline and Dennis Thiessen.
“We have the space. We are more than willing to fill the need,” said Jacqueline, who with her husband is involved in overseas mission work.
“In whatever small way we can help, we’re willing to do that.”
Canadian Food for the Hungry International is a Christian international agency involved in sustainable development work.
The group also dries waste fruit from growers in British Columbia, where it is based, for overseas food aid shipments.
Since 2001, a regional office in Saskatchewan has operated the International Medical Equipment Distribution Program (IMED), which collects, refurbishes and ships used hospital equipment to overseas medical facilities that do not have sufficient equipment to provide adequate health care.
