By Dominic Abassi

Hospital Foundation hoping to Light the Trees for new equipment in Nanaimo

Dec 3, 2016 | 6:44 AM

NANAIMO — Two new, state-of-the-art machines are up and running at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital (NRGH) — now the call is going out to the community to help pay for them.

The Nanaimo and District Hospital Foundation has kicked-off their first ever Light the Trees Christmas campaign. The goal is to raise $500,000 to pay off two recently purchased CT Scanners. Three out of 12 trees have been lit at the entrance of NRGH, representing $130,000 raised so far. As donations flow in, more trees will be lit.

“This machine would never have been purchased unless we’d agreed to it, because we knew the community would need it,” said Hospital Foundation chief executive officer Janice Perrino. “We didn’t want to have an old machine and new machine, so we’ve got two new machines…we need to raise about another $450,000 to pay for the machine and that’s where we really need the community’s help.”

Perrino says the two CT Scanners that were replaced were the oldest on Vancouver Island. She describes the machines as the “workhorse” at the hospital, serving about 20,000 mid-islanders every year and performing scans on about 60 to 70 patients a day. Perrino says having two at NRGH is very lucky for a region the size of the mid-island.

“One thing I know about health care, the community wants the very best equipment at their hospital…we can’t afford to not have this in there, so failure is not an option. We know the community will be there and we will keep fundraising for this until it’s done.”

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Perrino says there is still about $1-million worth of equipment that needs to be purchased for NRGH, but they can’t move on to fundraising for that until they pay off what has already been bought.

It will take about $40,000 to get each tree lit up and Perrino is hoping for a walkway full of sparkling trees by Christmas Eve.

She says community support for foundations like theirs across Canada is so critical because once the government pays for things like keeping the hospital open and paying the staff, buying new equipment becomes almost impossible because they run out of funding.

“If we didn’t buy it, it wouldn’t be there. We buy everything from chairs to stretchers, from operating room tables to CT Scanners…that’s the way we want it to be. We want to make sure they use their funds to keep our hospital the very best it can be and we’ll make sure they have the best medical equipment to work with.”

Last year, the local Hospital Foundation gave $1.5-million to Island Health, according to Perrino. She says their goal this year is to give $2-million.

To find out how you can donate, visit www.nanaimohospitalfoundation.com.