The Sheldon & Marion Davis Pacemaker Recycling Center at World Medical Relief is the home of Project "My Heart Your Heart," the first pacemaker reconditioning and recycling program in the world. The Center was made possible by a generous gift from Sheldon & Marion Davis in addition to other grants and private donations. Project My Heart Your Heart, in partnership with World Medical Relief, developed an innovative pacemaker reuse project to make refurbished lifesaving equipment available to low-income patients in need in developing countries.

 

Each year, over one million people around the world die due to a life-threatening slow heart rhythm and the lack of resources to get a pacemaker or an implantable defibrillator (ICD). Under the leadership of Kim Eagle MD, Director of the University of Michigan’s Frankel Cardiovascular Center, and Thomas Crawford MD, cardiac electrophysiologist at Michigan Medicine Cardiology, all aspects of pacemaker reuse were scientifically researched and approved by the FDA for export and use outside of the United States. World Medical Relief houses the Sheldon & Marion Davis Pacemaker Center, the world’s only pacemaker reconditioning center where thousands of devices arrive from across the country and are refurbished for future reuse.

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The first refurbished pacemaker implant procedure took place in a Kenyan Public Health Facility on February 20, 2018 (video of procedure). Since this procedure, there have been thousands of safe refurbished pacemaker implementations. 

 

“Through our national partnership with Implant Recycling, we have already received nearly 30,000 pacemakers from around the country,” commented Dr. Kim Eagle, founder of Project My Heart Your Heart. “Thanks to the work of Dr. Crawford, we have developed an international partnership with the Pan African Cardiac Society that trains African pacemaker implanters in South Africa who then go home to their native countries and perform these procedure – potentially saving thousands of lives.”

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Project My Heart Your Heart, initially under the project lead of Timir Baman, MD, was developed after more than 10 years of working closely with infectious disease experts, legal experts, ethical experts, health systems, engineers, pacemaker manufacturers, funeral homes and crematories. Key project partners include World Medical Relief, Dr. Kim Eagle, Dr. Thomas Crawford, Implant Recycling (Sterling Heights, MI), NEScientific (Waterbury, CT), and Michigan Clinical Outcomes Research and Reporting Program (MCORRP) at the University of Michigan.