PET scanner fund surpasses $1-million mark

One week after the province committed to provide permanent operational funding for a PET scanner in Sudbury, the Sam Bruno PET Scanner Fund Committee surpassed the $1-million mark to purchase the device.

A positron emission tomography (PET) scanner is a medical detection tool used in clinical oncology, to help detect brain diseases, such as various types of dementia, and heart disease. It is also an important research tool to map normal brain and heart functions.

On Dec. 15, Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins was in Sudbury to announce the province would commit $1.6 million in annual funding to Health Sciences North to operate a PET scanner.

The funding would allow the hospital to perform up to 750 tests per year. But the hospital would have to come up with the money to purchase the actual scanner.

At the time of the announcement, the Sam Bruno PET Scanner Fund Committee had raised $970,000 to purchase the device – which costs between $3.5 million and $4 million.

In the week following Hoskins' announcement, the committee managed to collect more than $40,000 for the fund.

“We're just so ecstatic,” said committee member Brenda Tessaro.

With operational funding in place, more people are willing to donate to the fund to buy the device, said Tessaro.

She added a number of local businesses could make significant donations before the operational funding is officially in place on April 1, 2016.

The committee's goal, she said, is to collect all the funds necessary to purchase a PET scanner by this spring.

There are currently 12 PET centres in Ontario, but none in the northeast, even though the region has the province's highest cancer death rate and the second highest rate of cardiac death.

As in Sudbury, the provincial government covers the operational costs for those PET scanners, but each community and hospital had to raise the funds to purchase the machines.

The Northern Cancer Foundation accepts funds to purchase a PET scanner, and donations can also be made directly to the committee through its GoFundMe page.