The mission of UCHealth is to improve lives, in big ways and small ways.

One of the ways UCHealth Memorial Hospital fulfills that mission is by participating in Project C.U.R.E., the largest provider of medical supplies and equipment to developing countries across the world.

In January, 2014, Memorial Hospital began collecting unused and/or expired medical supplies and equipment. UCHealth’s University of Colorado Hospital on the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, Colorado, also participates in the program.

Recently, Project C.U.R.E. sent a letter to Memorial thanking the hospital for donations of gurneys to a hospital in Comayaguela, Honduras, which serves a population of 500,000 people.

A doctor and his colleagues started the hospital in 1995, but much of what they built was destroyed by Hurricane Mitch in 1998. Over the years, they have continued to invest in expanding services and care in an area that is plagued by overpopulation and underemployment. Health care for the urban poor is extremely limited.

“It was great to receive the letter from Project C.U.R.E. and awesome to share with the employees at Memorial,’’ said Ryan Titus, operations manager for Clinical Engineering at Memorial.

Over the years, the Clinical Engineering department has helped coordinate the movement of supplies and machinery to Project C.U.R.E., which has headquarters in Centennial, Colorado, and distributes supplies to more than 130 countries across the world.

Memorial has donated beds, anesthesia machines, ventilators, monitors, fetal monitors, infusion pumps, patient-controlled analgesic pumps, epidural pumps and miscellaneous supplies and equipment, Titus said.

“It’s safe to say that the donations are in the thousands and thousands of dollars’’ Titus said.

The supplies, which otherwise may have ended up in a landfill, help bridge gaps in the way medicine is delivered in developing countries. Another benefit of Memorial’s participation is it helps the hospital manage its own inventory of supplies.

The letter from Project C.U.R.E. went onto say that the donated gurneys allow the hospital in Honduras “to continue serving their community with the best possible care they can provide. We are so grateful to Memorial Hospital for help in spreading health and hope to the people of Comayaguela, Honduras!’’

“We will continue to ask for these kinds of letters because it helps us to know that we are helping people beyond our community, which is good to know,’’ Titus said.

The Patient-Centered Council at Memorial helped launch the Project C.U.R.E. initiative at Memorial three years ago.