The 100 Mile District General Hospital has a new ventilator thanks to TB Vets.
“It is critical in the event that we actually have to intubate a patient and provide them with an artificial airway and breathing mechanism,” says acute care manager Alison Filewich.
“If we have a fairly significant trauma through a motor vehicle accident or an ATV accident and the patient requires that assistance with breathing we would hook them up to this machine which would basically breathe for them.”
That’s for while they wait to get the patient out to a higher level of care (i.e. and ICU) because it’s not available in 100 Mile, says Filewich. The ventilator is small and mobile so it can travel with the patient in a helicopter or ambulance.
The old model, which the hospital had been using, is similar, says Filewich, but being phased out in part because it’s no longer being serviced.
TB Vet director Kandys Merola says they’ve helped out with a couple of other machines in 100 Mile.
“This small hospital needs help with this kind of equipment.”
SCHF public relations and fundraising co-ordinator Brenda Devine reached out to see if TB Vets would be able to purchase the machine, she says.
The South Cariboo Health Foundation (SCHF) had been looking at making the $32,000 purchase but it would have taken a fair bit of fundraising, says Devine.
“The whole thing is that we as a foundation only have so many donated dollars that come in from individuals or corporations but wherever there are resources available to us that doesn’t take our immediate funds…We can then use our funding to do other things,” ” says SCHF public relations and fundraising co-ordinator Brenda Devine.
“Of course at TB Vets, we’re willing to help,” says Merola.
TB Vets raises their money though lost and found key tags.
“If someone finds them they can drop them in any mailbox in Canada.”
In return they just ask for a donation, says TB Vet director Peter Merola. They operate just in the province of B.C.
“We have a greater impact perhaps on smaller community hospitals like these versus say a regional hospital where there’s a lot more funding available to them.”
“We ask that the community supports us as much as possible in as much as that we are supporting this community.”
There is a finite amount of money going around, says Filewich.
If it wasn’t for the Merola’s and South Cariboo Health Foundation’s efforts “we wouldn’t be able to afford this kind of care,” says Filewich. “That has a tendency to compromise patient outcomes.”
