By Michelle Mills
QUT graduate Achi Kushnir has witnessed the needs and pressures of strained medical services when he served in the Israeli Ambulance Service.
He has been one of the first at the scene of bombings and various medical emergencies and has seen firsthand how essential emergency medical equipment is for saving lives.
Now as a medical engineer and member of QUT’s Chapter of Engineers Without Borders (EWB), Achi is using his skills and passion to help provide hospitals and communities in Papua New Guinea with vital lifesaving medical equipment.
EWB is an organisation that aims to help disadvantaged communities improve their quality of life through education and the implementation of sustainable engineering projects.
Achi and fellow graduate Taewon Kong from Korea, have just returned from a fact-finding mission to the impoverished Sepik province in Papua New Guinea where they visited hospitals and non-governmental organisations that support local communities.
Their project ‘Medical Equipment Mission for Communities in Need’ (MEMCI) aims to collect redundant low-maintenance medical equipment from hospitals around Queensland.
They then hope to repair and distribute it, along with spare parts, knowledge and training programs to communities who desperately need these lifesaving devices that we take for granted.
“We visited hospitals where they didn’t have mattresses, beds, IV drips… we heard testimonies from nurses who witnessed death of infants due to lack of access to basic medical equipment such as suction pumps and medical oxygen. A defibrillator is a life saving medical device and can be found in every hospital and many health clinics in Australia, while in Port Moresby, the biggest city in PNG, we could only find only one defibrillator in working condition,” he said.
“Having seen the conditions of hospitals and communities first hand, we know that the opportunities this project offers our fellow students who want to make a difference are enormous. The idea of EWB was really inspiring, it really affected me, that we could go overseas and use our engineering skills on projects. A lot of people want to do something good but they don’t know how.”
Despite the name, not all members need to be from the engineering field, and the QUT chapter hope to enlist students from many disciplines in their aid project including those from nursing, education and IT.
Students interested in contributing to this EWB project can contact Achi Kushnir and view the Engineers Without Borders website. | 
