Shamim Ashraf, Post-Gazette Charles Haeussner, a retired surgeon, holds a tray of donated surgical supplies at Brother's Brother Foundation. They will be sorted into individualized packages for specific recipients in needy communities around the world. Click photo for larger image.

Honduran ophthalmologic surgeon Dr. Diego Mejia says he was speechless when he received high quality instruments for delicate sight-restoring surgery from a visiting Pittsburgh surgeon. Without wasting any time, he put them to use in repairing patients' cornea damage from machete accidents, and performing cataract extractions and eye muscle surgery.

To him, the donation of the quality and costly instruments from Pittsburgh-based charity organization Brother's Brother Foundation was a "Christmas gift" in February. Similar gifts have gone to patients in other developing countries, people who do not get the care they need due to a lack of surgery instruments. With substandard and worn-out instruments, Dr. Mejia and other surgeons have difficulty with delicate surgeries.

Help came with a gift in December from a major U.S. surgical instrument supplier. The foundation, which has been working since 1958 to fulfill the motto "Connecting people's resources with people's needs," received 753 boxes of surgical instruments to distribute where it saw a need. Each box contained about 100 instruments each.

Among the three boxes he received, Dr. Milind Gosavi -- head of the ear, nose and throat department at Wanless Hospital, Miraj Medical Centre, India -- found a nasal instrument, which his hospital could not afford. The donation helped him replace many old instruments from the '60s and '70s.

Hospitals and clinics in 26 countries, including Honduras and India, received 128 specially packed boxes of surgical instruments from January to June.

"Many operating rooms in the developing world simply lack basic instruments due to the tremendous cost of obtaining them. The instruments we've got are of better quality and precision than those now being used in many hospitals in the U.S.," said foundation medical director Chip Lambert, an emergency medicine physician who is also the outreach coordinator, Medical Benevolence Foundation of the Presbyterian Church/USA.

Dr. Lambert, who has been working with Brother's Brother for five years, took the instruments to Nicaragua and Congo. He also volunteered to take donations to Malawi, Kenya, Costa Rica, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

When the original 753 boxes arrived, the instruments, valued at $4.8 million, were sorted into groups for use in general, plastic, orthopedic, cardiothoracic and vascular, neurosurgery, ophthalmologic, ENT and obstetrics-gynecology surgery at the 25,000-square-foot Brother's Brother warehouse in the North Side.

A single box was divided up to supply several operating rooms.

The first recipient, Dr. Mejia's clinic Centro Cristiano de Servicios Humanitaios de Honduras, in Yoro, received five trays of general and ophthalmology surgery instruments in January.

General surgeons in Hospital El Progreso, also in Yoro, were struggling to perform open gall bladder surgery for want of an adequate and correct angle clamp to encircle the cystic duct (which joins the gall bladder to the common bile duct). Now they have the clamps, along with hemostats, needle drivers and retractors.

Other countries that received the instruments are Haiti, Philippines, Panama, Cuba, Vietnam, Mexico, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Tanzania, Ghana, Malawi, Brazil, Cameroon, Sierra Leone, Congo, Kenya, Zambia, Madagascar, Guatemala, Ecuador, Paraguay, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and China.

Providing pharmaceutical, medical supplies, education materials and agricultural products to people in need worldwide for more than 49 years, Brother's Brother networks with humanitarian and faith-based organizations in more than 150 countries to take donated resources there.

Products donated by American companies from excess inventory and overproduction can be shipped through the foundation to areas in need in times of natural disaster, war and on a continuing, sustaining basis.

Dr. Sethe Bekoe, a retired Ghanaian thoracic surgeon at Mercy Hospital in Pittsburgh, networked with his former student, Dr. Rudolph Darko, who is the chief of surgery at Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in Ghana's capital, Accra, and handed over six trays of surgical instruments to him in March.

"This is a way of giving back to the society," Dr. Bekoe said.

The foundation each year has supported more than 100 American mission teams, who have been forced to hand-carry their own instruments when traveling abroad to do mission surgery, due to a lack of adequate supplies in operating rooms in those countries. The latest equipment donation makes an even larger impact.

"Because of the size of the donation and durability of the instruments, it will be a lasting legacy, providing decades of use to hundreds of thousands of people who would otherwise be limited in receiving treatment for many years to come," said Dr. Charles F. Haeussner, retired general surgeon of UPMC St. Margaret Hospital, who has volunteered at the foundation for eight years.

Besides taking surgical instruments to Honduras, Dr. Haeussner also visited Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala to distribute donations.

"The instruments would make a lot of difference. ... These would facilitate more surgical operations at the beneficiary hospitals as well as contribute towards quality healthcare in Northern Ghana," said Mustapha Sanah, executive chairman of Northern Ghana Aid, in a speech during the official May 23 distribution of four trays of surgical instruments he received from Brother's Brother to be shared by three hospitals in northern Ghana.

In a new development, another consignment of surgical instruments, about half as large as the first, is expected to arrive later this month, donated by World Medical Relief, of Detroit, Mich.

In 2006 alone, Brother's Brother shipped goods worth more than $262 million to 52 countries. Plans are now being made to distribute 1 million pairs of Crocs shoes (plastic perforated clogs) by 2008 among those in need in 30 countries.

"We want to grow further, want to bring more people in our network: donors, recipients and volunteers. But make no mistake, we want to see people self-sufficient," said Luke L. Hingson, Brother's Brother president.

On the Web: www.brothersbrother.org.