Dallas anesthesiologist Dr. Christopher Haas helps bring life into the world everyday, preparing pregnant women to deliver.

And as a surgeon Dr. David Vanderpool saves lives just as often. Both doctors use cutting edge medical equipment to work, but in the U.S. what is considered cutting edge quickly changes.

"This stuff basically gets replaced on a constant basis in the U.S," Dr. Christopher Haas said.

Because technology improves so fast, perfectly usable equipment gets thrown away.

"The manufacturers just destroy it, and it goes to the landfill and it's wasted. There are places all over the world that need this equipment to save human lives," Dr. David Vanderpool said.

"The scope of the problem is huge, $20 billion per year, about 1.5 million tons that's disposed and is harming our environment," Dr. Christopher Haas said.

Now these doctors are spreading the wealth by recycling what is considered old medical equipment in America and taking it to poorer countries like the Ukraine, where hospitals struggle to pay for even the most basic equipment.

"They remind of the old Parkland when I started in my medical training back in the early 1950's, maybe even more primitive than that," Dr. Vanderpool said.

In the U.S. every pregnant woman is hooked up to a fetal monitor when delivering a baby. In the Ukraine, they use a hollowed wooden device and put it straight on the abdomen.

"They have no other way to assess the baby, they don't even have a sonogram machine in the hospital," said Kristine Debuty, a registered nurse at Baylor Labor and Delivery.

The team donated six fetal monitors to three hospitals and plan to donate more. But just one of these can serve up to 25 hundred patients a year.

The team of two doctors, a nurse and an Russian interpreter installed used medical equipment that would have otherwise been thrown away, and taught classes on how to use, repair and maintain it.

"It's a tragedy to have perfectly good equipment go to waste," Dr. Haas said.

And what started out as a way to change lives turned into a life changing event for them too.

"We are so blessed in this country, we just don't realize how fortunate we are," Dr. Vanderpool said.

"I feel compelled. It adds purpose to my life. It's incredibly, incredibly satisfying," Dr. Haas said.