After 33 years, REMEDY — Recovered medical equipment for the developing world — is closing its doors. REMEDY was founded after Dr. William Rosenblatt, a resident in anesthesiology at Yale New Haven Hospital (YNHH) in the late 1980’s participated in Interplast surgical mission trips in Ecuador, Hounduras and Peru. During these adventures he noted the acute shortages of the same medical supplies that were often discarded without any patient contact in the United States simply because they were removed from their packaging. Dr. Rosenblatt strove to develop a system to recover these supplies and distribute them abroad through charities based in the United States. Evelyn Hunt, a sterilization technician at YNHH facilitated the cleaning and packaging of these early supplies, and Lee Cruz, living in Leon Nicaragua as a representative of the New Haven - Leon Sister City Project oversaw their honest distribution. Dr. Rosenblatt joined the faculty at Yale School of Medicine in 1991 where through the benevolence of the Department of Anesthesiology, chaired by Drs. Paul Barash and Roberta Hines, REMEDY was allowed to flourish. With his faculty mentor, Dr. David Silverman, Dr. Rosenblatt published both opinions and observational studies in many subspecialty medical journals, illustrating the potential material recovery in several surgical fields. In 1992 Drs Rosenblatt and Silverman published such a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). In 1996 the pair won the Rolex Award for Enterprise and was awarded $50,000 in seed money to promote the REMEDY recovery concept. Later, the Friedman Foundation became a multiyear donor. The REMEDY staff attended medical meetings and eventually recruited more than 600 US hospitals into the program. In 2008 the group a launched an online donor-recipient virtual warehouse that eventually became Med-Eq (At the time of its closing, Med-Eq had posted more than 17,500 donations in its warehouse.) In 2009, an embezzlement by an employee set the group back, and REMEDY turned to the internet and Med-Eq to fulfill the bulk of its mission. John Tangredi, a nurse at YNHH (now retired from nursing) assumed the materials managment of the recovery program, working in a warehouse space generously donated by the medical center. Mr. Tangredi’s efforts have been the supply backbone of countless surgical missions abroad.
Named above are just a few of the many persons who aided and promoted REMEDY. Time and memory limit the list here.
The REMEDY Board of Directors would like to extend its thanks to Yale New Haven Hospital, Yale School of Medicine, and the many volunteers and donors who demonstrated their faith in our mission. Though parting is such sweet sorrow, we leave with the sense of a job well done and a mission that launched a thousand similar efforts.