For several days, several volunteers have been busy dismantling a dental office in the Roseraie district of Toulouse. These lamps, armchairs and other autoclaves will not end up on a resale site but will soon be heading for Ukraine in a thirty-ton convoy transported by the Occitan association, based in Montauban, in the Tarn-et- Garonne.
A little over a week ago, its president, Pascal Serrier, received a phone call like no other. “Doctor Léon Guedj, retired, explained to me that he had been looking for more than two years for someone to take over his dental practice, without succeeding. After seeing a report on our association, he contacted us to tell us that he wanted to donate all his equipment. Rather than buying a car or paying for a trip, it was his way of participating, it’s very generous, ”says the man who founded this association a few years ago to help the homeless. and mobilized from the first hour to come to the aid of the Ukrainian people.
Last year, with the forty volunteers who work daily alongside him, they managed to send ten convoys of medical equipment, but also generators or even clothing and survival rations to Ukraine.
Ukrainian nationals come to lend a hand
But it was the first time he had been called to dismantle a medical practice from A to Z. To achieve this, nationals of the country at war, who regularly come to the association’s collection room set up in the Albasud shopping mall in Montauban, have lent a hand in unscrewing and dismantling the chairs and other dental instruments.
“They regularly help us load the convoys. On site, in Ukraine, we have two correspondents who take care of receiving them. If other people want to make donations, we are ready to do so again because they lack equipment to sanitize, compressors or even generators”, insists Pascal Serrier who continues in parallel to work with the homeless by distributing them especially blankets.