St Vincent’s helping Save Our Supplies to save lives around the world

Thirteen years after she first kicked off a personal crusade to reduce hospital disposal of clean, unused medical supplies and to re-purpose it for communities in need worldwide, Claire Lane can scarcely believe what she and her team have created.

The St Vincent’s Private Hospital Northside theatre nurse witnessed first-hand – day in, day out – the wastage of clean and unused supplies which is commonplace for a major hospital. As a natural problem-solver, Claire searched for a solution.

When she found there wasn’t one in Australia, she created her own SOS – Save Our Supplies - which started in a granny flat in the backyard of her parents’ home in 2012, while garnering the support of St Vincent’s Northside as the founding hospital partner.

“Every day in hospitals big and small around Australia, thousands of gowns, tools and instruments are discarded due to various reasons like expiration dates or small packaging punctures that have little to no effect on performance,” says Claire.

“Even though the equipment doesn’t reach our very high Australian standards it’s still perfectly clean and can be used in overseas hospitals and a lot of other environments other than hospitals.

“The charity was a bit of a hobby for the first five years until I decided I wanted to put more effort into it as I could see how much need there was in other countries. In the early days, I did almost everything myself and after a while partnered with Rotary to help get medical supplies to developing nations and war-torn countries, including recently to Ukraine and Gaza.

“We know it makes the world of difference to health care in many of these countries and communities.

In some places that we’ve worked with, they’re so short of basic medical supplies that they regularly have to re-use bandages.

“In another hospital they ran out of stitches during a caesarean operation and they had to wait for more suture material to be brought from another town hours away so they could complete the operation.

“We’ve decided to focus now more on our Pacific nation neighbours and have just formed a new partnership with an NGO, Airlink Flight, a global humanitarian organisation.

“I funded this myself for the first decade and we’ve been lucky to have some private philanthropic funding for a number of years but that won’t last forever so we’re seeing if we can get some sort of government funding.

“We’d also love lots more hospitals to get on board and it’s my dream to ideally have at least one receptacle for donated medical items in every hospital in Australia.”

Claire’s work has been recognised nationally and locally with a series of awards in recent years, including the St Vincent’s Health Award, the Lord Mayor’s Business Award and the Queensland Health Minister’s Award for Nursing Trailblazers.

The collaboration between St Vincent’s Private Hospital Northside and SOS is complementary to St Vincent’s broader Environmental and Sustainability strategy of becoming a low carbon, climate-resilient health and aged care provider.

In 2024, St Vincent’s Health Australia reduced clinical waste by 10% and landfill by 11% due to improvements in segregation and additional recycling streams, including SOS. A recent visit to the SOS warehouse revealed around 1,900 different medical products donated from 18 hospitals around Brisbane including St Vincent’s Northside. SOS also receives donations from hospitals on the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast.

Aside from unused medical supplies, St Vincent’s Northside has donated larger equipment such as theatre lights and beds.

Judene Andrews, St Vincent’s Group Environment Social Governance Lead says St Vincent’s is dedicated to safeguarding the environment, minimising greenhouse gas emissions, and conserving Earth's resources for future generations.

She says St Vincent’s Health Australia’s environmental sustainability initiatives are a core component of its 2030 strategy and a strategic priority to mitigate the environmental impact of its hospitals and aged care homes.

“As leaders in healthcare, it is imperative that we integrate efforts to decarbonise and build climate resilience into every aspect of our decision-making and collaborating with Save Our Supplies (SOS) through the donation of over 1000kg (1 tonne) of medical supplies just in the last six months enhances the health our Pacific communities and our planet,” says Judene.

“This year we donated a range of medical equipment including ultrasound, anaesthetic machines and IV fluid bags. We are looking to extend our partnership to include our aged care facilities in Queensland.”

The SOS and St Vincent’s Northside collaboration and story was featured last night on Channel 10 News. You can view the clip above.

St Vincent’s helping Save Our Supplies to save lives around the world

Better and fairer care. Always.