- When I was working as a registered nurse,

I was also traveling to many different parts of the world.

And that's where I realized that these hospitals

don't have any medical supplies to take care of patients.

And that's really when I said to myself,

I'm going to figure this problem out.

And that's what I've done.

My name is Elizabeth McLellan, and I'm the president

and founder of Partners for World Health.

Our healthcare system is extremely complicated.

There are many federal rules and regulations in our country.

And as a result of that, all healthcare centers

have to discard medical supplies because they may have been

in a patient's room.

These are not used medical supplies.

They are clean, they are unopened,

and could be used in the developing world.

I started collecting medical supplies in 2007.

And because there was no place to store them

in the healthcare facilities, I started to take them home.

My cellar filled up from the floor to the ceiling,

and it overflowed into the downstairs bathroom

until there was just a little path that I could follow.

And then, eventually, in September of 2009,

I put my money in to rent the first warehouse.

And there are so many people that have joined with us

on this to keep it going.

So it has a life of its own now, which is pretty exciting.

(upbeat chamber music)

We load the containers with 15 to 18,000 pounds

of discarded medical supplies.

We collect these discarded supplies now from all over

the state of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont,

and 15 hospitals in Massachusetts.

And we bring them up here to our distribution warehouse

where we sort through all of these supplies.

We package them, check expiration dates,

and we ship the container loads over to different countries

in Asia and Africa, the Middle East, all over India

and Pakistan, Sri Lanka, et cetera.

(soft piano music)

After the hurricane in Puerto Rico,

we identified that there was a huge need down there.

And so we are shipping the fourth container

of medical supplies to be distributed in Puerto Rico.

(laughter)

- We have a model that works, so there's a way to do this.

If I can collect one bag of medical supplies,

now look what's happened.

And so it's important that we recognize that there are

so many people in our world that would benefit

from these discarded medical supplies.

So, that's why I'm doing this.

Because it's very important to me that we try to reach out

and be committed to something greater than

our own self interests and make a difference in our world.

(flowing orchestra music)