A doctor in Indonesia recently came up with an idea that can help to provide healthcare to the needy and put a dent in garbage pollution as well.
Dr. Gamal Albinsaid recognized that many people in his country had severe health problems with no insurance, and no money to pay for medicine or medical care. He also noticed that many rural villages nearby were filled with garbage.
Thinking on how to solve both problems, Gamal eventually decided that he would provide free health care to people who turned in their garbage.
“You have people who can’t go to the hospital because they don’t have money. So I started thinking, if you don’t have money, what do you have?” Gamal said.
“There’s garbage everywhere on the ground. So we decided to use garbage as a financial resource,” he continued.
He then created a company called Garbage Clinical Insurance which collects the trash that is given to him by his patients and then sells it to recycling companies. The money earned from the recycled garbage is then used to pay for medicine and health care for the people who turned in the trash.
Hālau 'Aha Hui Lānākila 