Tapestry aims to raise $350,000 for Mount Saint Joseph
By Brent Mattson
The B.C. Catholic
VANCOUVER--When you need help, as Mount Saint Joseph Hospital does, it’s always good to have friends like the Tapestry Foundation.
Tapestry Foundation for Health Care presented this year’s Feast of Fortune campaign at Mount Saint Joseph Hospital Nov. 23. The goal is to raise $350,000 for a Sterrad Sterilizer, a Nerve Integrity Monitor, and a Pulmonary Function System.
The foundation is already halfway to its goal, and Sing Lim Yeo, Tapestry’s honorary chairman, hopes to see continued support. He says it’s important for the only hospital on Vancouver’s east side to keep up the level of service to the 19,000 patients it sees annually.
“I want to encourage big corporations and businesses (to give),” Yeo said. Companies “can take some small profit and give back to the community and make a big difference.”
Surgeon Dr. Emile Woo said items on the hospital’s wish list would enhance its surgical program, which has more than 15,000 cases per year.
Mount Saint Joseph increasingly performs minimally invasive surgeries which require special instruments. These surgeries are performed through multiple small incisions, causing less pain and decreasing recovery time. However the polymer and plastic instruments used cannot be cleaned at high temperatures like the old stainless steel ones.
Sterrad Sterilizers clean instruments using hydrogen peroxide at a temperature below 60 degrees Celsius.
Dr. Woo said a Nerve Integrity Monitor allows surgeons to locate tiny nerves, making surgery much safer.
“When we do head and neck surgery such as thyroid surgery, we have to be very careful about the nerves that run through,” he said. “If we injure one of the nerves, patients can be left with deficits, including loss of voice and even loss of the ability to open or close their eyes.”
The hospital’s current pulmonary function machine needs backup. The machine allows doctors to peek into patients’ hearts and lungs.
“A pulmonary function test doesn’t give you a static image of what things look like at one time,” Dr. Woo said. It “allows us to be able to check and see dynamically how well someone is breathing and how well their lungs and airways are working.” He said it’s useful for testing lung function of surgery patients before they are anesthetized.
Tapestry will cover the entire capital cost of the new equipment. The government pays ongoing operating costs of all initiatives in the hospital.
Janice Victory, the hospital’s operations leader, said such initiatives cannot be achieved without Tapestry.
“We do have a capital equipment budget, but not all the needs can be met by that fund,” she said, “so we do rely on the Tapestry Foundation to help us with our needs. That enables us to carry out our mission of caring for our patients and our residents.”
Yeo added Tapestry needs more than money from the community.
“We are facing the challenge of future leadership,” he said. “We need more people to get involved, especially young people. We need their knowledge, expertise, commitment, and time.
Donations can be made through http://www.tapestryfoundation.ca or 604-877-8335.
