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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CN donates $60,000 to help doctors prevent blindness in Royal Columbian Hospital's tiniest patients
John Klaus (right), CN General Manager, BC South Division presents $60,000 to Gordon Stewart, Director - Leadership Giving, and Laurie Tetarenko, Vice-president, of the Royal Columbian Hospital Foundation to help fund a RetCam Shuttle for the RCH Neonatal Intensive Care Unit to help doctors prevent blindness in premature babies.
New Westminster, B.C. – April 22, 2009 – CN announced today that it has donated $60,000 to RCH Foundation to help fund a RetCam Shuttle for the RCH Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), which will help doctors prevent blindness in their tiny patients.
“Giving back to the community is a priority for CN,” said John Orr, CN Assistant Vice-President, BC South Division. “Royal Columbian Hospital is a vital part of the community in which our employees work and live and when we look at the areas we serve in our BC South region, we consider RCH to be ‘our hospital’.”
RCH serves more than 1.5 million people from Burnaby to Boston Bar – the largest and fastest growing health region in the province. The increasing number of premature infants cared for at RCH means demand for specialized eye exams outweighs the availability of registered ophthalmologists.
Orr added, “We at CN are proud to support RCH Foundation in the funding of this technology as it translates directly into improvement for the sickest of sick babies. To be able to help prevent a baby from going blind is tremendous and makes us feel very good.”
Premature and low birth weight babies are at high risk for developing Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP), a common yet devastating eye disease.
It can be successfully treated in the early stages with laser surgery; if not treated in time, an infant may go blind. Currently, physicians in RCH’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) are only able to monitor progression of this disease through manual eye exams.
“These examinations are not only painful for these fragile little babies, they do not provide an accurate assessment of their condition,”
says Dr. Zenon Cieslak, NICU Medical Director. With the RetCam Shuttle, however, trained nursing staff and paediatric physicians can quickly and safely scan an infant’s eye in five minutes.
“We are incredibly grateful to CN for their generous gift, as it is helping to provide the advanced technology needed to help RCH deliver the highest standard of care to these tiny patients,”” said Adrienne Bakker, RCH Foundation president and CEO.
About Royal Columbian Hospital (RCH)
RCH is one of 12 hospitals under the umbrella of the Fraser Health Authority. It is a regional referral hospital for trauma, critical care, cardiac, maternity, newborn intensive care and neurosciences for 1.5 million people from Burnaby to Boston Bar. RCH is also a UBC teaching hospital with a newly expanded Clinical Academic Campus and a community hospital serving New Westminster residents.
About Royal Columbian Hospital Foundation
Royal Columbian Hospital Foundation is an independent charitable organization that raises millions of dollars annually to help fund priority equipment needs, facility enhancements, research and education at RCH. For more information about Royal Columbian Hospital Foundation, please visit rchfoundation.com
About CN
Through the CN Stronger Communities Fund, CN supports health and safety programs for young people, transportation education, the CN Railroaders in the Community employee volunteer grant program, and United Way. As an Imagine Caring Company, CN is committed to contributing one per cent of pre-tax profit to registered, non-profit organizations in communities where our employees work and where we operate our business.
CN – Canadian National Railway Company and its operating railway subsidiaries – spans Canada and mid-America, from the Atlantic and Pacific oceans to the Gulf of Mexico, serving the ports of Vancouver, Prince Rupert, B.C., Montreal, Halifax, New Orleans, and Mobile, Ala., and the key metropolitan areas of Toronto, Buffalo, Chicago, Detroit, Duluth, Minn./Superior, Wis., Green Bay, Wis., Minneapolis/St. Paul, Memphis, and Jackson, Miss., with connections to all points in North America. For more information on CN, visit the company’s website at www.cn.ca.
For more information, please contact:
Adrienne Bakker, President and CEO
(604) 520-4669
adrienne.bakker@fraserhealth.ca |
