$20K donation to help expand HSN pediatrics (3 photos)

A new $20,000 donation to the North Eastern Ontario Health Centre for Kids will help Health Sciences North expand to an additional facility for pediatric services in the community.

The centre receives 200 new referrals each month, said Mary Lou Hussak, executive director of the Health Sciences North Foundation.

“We're going to outgrow this space,” she said.

The new building will connect the North Eastern Ontario Health Centre for Kids to the nearby Children's Treatment Centre, and consolidate all outpatient services for children at Health Sciences North under one roof.

McDougall Energy and Imperial – formerly Imperial Oil – made the $20,000 donation to the centre through the Esso Community Investment Program.

“On behalf of our Sudbury team, extended families and our partner, Imperial, we are pleased to support children’s health-care excellence in the North Eastern Ontario through our support of NEO Kids,” said McDougall Energy president Darren McDougall in a press release.

“It's going to do wonderful things for the north,” said Jessica Grenier, who has been visiting the North Eastern Ontario Health Centre for Kids for five years with her son, Tyler, who has autism. “It's going to provide a lot of families with a sense of stability.”

Tyler receives occupational therapy, physiotherapy and speech language pathology services through the centre.

Dr. Sean Murray, a pediatrician and medical director of the hospital's Family and Child program, said the donation shows pediatrics have become a bigger priority locally.

“People don't look at kids as being sick, so they wouldn't necessarily understand that kids do need the type of health care that we provide,” he said.

Through Murray's work at Health Sciences North, along with other pediatricians, many children and their families have been able to stay in Sudbury for their medical care, instead of travelling to Ottawa or Toronto.

Murray said the hospital's botox clinic, for example, treats children with cerebral palsy who had to go to a rehabilitation centre in Toronto in the past.

Today, children from all over northeastern Ontario come to the clinic, he said.

The hospital's outreach cancer clinic also greatly reduces the amount of time children and their families need to spend at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children for their cancer treatment.

Murray said he and his colleagues often do more than most pediatricians because there are not as many specialists in Sudbury as in larger centres.

“We have to fill that void, and I think we do an admirable job of it,” he said.