There was laughter and much good-natured kidding around yesterday in the cluttered parking area outside the Balaan Catalina Society Clubhouse at 94-065 D Waipahu Depot Road.

But amid the revelry, dozens of determined volunteers strained to load heavy medical equipment into a 40-foot blue shipping container bound for the Philippines. Each worker seemed aware of the urgency of the task at hand. From 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. they boxed, lifted and hauled in unison as if motivated by the same assumption:

One hospital's throwaway bed springs are a medical miracle to a needy Third World nation.

One helper, Luz Bayot, held a clipboard and checked off the list of things that will be going across the sea. There were six dialysis machines, one EKG unit, 32 hospital beds, 46 mattresses, 100 computers, a small forest of I.V. posts ...

"We could have used a forklift," said Bayot, director of the Hawai'i Gospel Rescue Mission, as 10 men pushed and dragged three steel hospital beds up a plank and into the container the old-fashioned hard way. "This way is fun, though. This way is about fellowship."

The equipment will be donated to Cebu hospitals that can put it to good use to save lives. The computers and other educational supplies will be given to Cebu schools that otherwise would do without.

Erwin Gabrillo, past president of the society, has been the driving force behind the medical equipment effort. The campaign was born of a trip that he and Aloha Medical Mission took in 2006 to offer assistance in Southern Leyte, site of that year's deadly mudslide that killed more than 1,000 residents and buried the village of Guinsaugon.

"While there, we were able to go around to some parts of the island of Cebu and we saw hospitals with very little equipment — some had very few beds and patients were sleeping on the floor or two patients to a bed," Gabrillo said. "We realized that here when beds and other medical equipment are no longer needed, they're just thrown away."

Gabrillo, who operates a business that sends packages from the Islands to the Philippines, already had a network of contacts and a small army of Balaan Catalina Society members eager to help out. Hospitals acquiring the latest equipment were willing to donate their outdated but still usable equipment to the cause.

"It took us about three months to gather up all this equipment," said George Carpenter, a retired Department of Defense investigator and member of the society.

Carpenter said the medical equipment idea is a near-perfect fit for everyone involved.

There's not much of a market in this country for outdated hospital equipment, he said. So, medical centers frequently end up throwing the old stuff away. Meanwhile, poor countries that need EKG and dialysis machines, beds and other supplies have neither the means nor the money to acquire the used equipment.

The Balaan Catalina Society is anxious to fulfill its mission to help folks in need. The answer is for the society to serve as a conduit between those who have and those who need.

"About the only place you can outlet used hospital equipment is to Third World countries," Carpenter said. "And most hospitals don't know how to get in touch with someone in a Third World country.

"Now they have a way. They can call us."

Reach Will Hoover at whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com.