Medical Equipment Bound for Morocco Found Discarded in French Landfill

In a statement to the website actu.fr, the president of the Association of Muslims of Vimoutiers and the Regional Union of Mosques of France, Hakim Miftah, said he was dismayed and said he did not understand how equipment, sometimes purchased, and stored in a building in the city, was thrown in the landfill without him being informed.

"For several years we have been taking ambulances with medical equipment to remote regions of Morocco. We manage to recover them from retirement homes, clinics, hospitals," he told actu. "We have a convoy leaving Vimoutiers on Monday, February 25. In this perspective, I contacted one of the heads of the city’s technical services on Monday, February 18, to arrange a meeting on Friday, February 22, to take three medical beds to ship them to Morocco. He replied: ok."

But on Friday morning, the association leader received an SMS from the town hall informing him that "in the obligation to clear the premises where they were stored in the industrial area, the beds and other equipment have been put in the landfill."

Acknowledging his mistake, the mayor promised to contact the various hospitals in the region to "find used medical beds to compensate." "But since it was I who asked that this building be evacuated, I take responsibility for it," the mayor admitted.