The Lions Gate Hospital Foundation is ramping up its fundraising to provide medical equipment that might be urgently needed in the face of an influx of coronavirus patients.
On Friday, March 13, the hospital bought five additional ventilators for use at the North Vancouver hospital at the request of front-line caregivers at a cost of over $200,000.
That’s in addition to seven additional ventilators the foundation has purchased over the past year.
On Wednesday, the foundation launched its COVID-19 Emergency Response Fund with the donation of $250,000 from North Shore philanthropist Paul Myers, plus two “significant” donations, one from Bruce and Diana Chan and another from an anonymous North Shore family.
Medical teams at Lions Gate have set up a dedicated COVID-19 unit on the second floor of the hospital, which will be equipped to treat the most seriously ill patients.
The foundation’s emergency response fund will provide needed equipment for the unit, as well as supply related community programs on the North Shore responding to the coronavirus crisis.
“We don’t know what’s coming down the pike. We just don’t want money to be an issue for them,” said Judy Savage, chair of the foundation. As a foundation, “We’re nimble, we’re able to react very quickly. So if they need something, if we’ve got the money there, we can buy it right away,” she said.
“We don’t yet know what’s going to come in the coming weeks or months.”
Myers, a West Vancouver businessman who previously donated $25 million towards a new acute care tower for Lions Gate Hospital, said he was moved to make the donation because “I just thought everybody should help out and do the best we can.”
Myers said he’s aware of situations in the epicentres of the COVID-19 crisis around the world where doctors have had to make decisions about who gets a life-saving ventilator and who doesn’t. “It seemed to be a very urgent need,” he said.
“Money’s not doing any good there in the bank. If it can be used to save lives that’s where it should be.”
Savage said the hospital foundation launched the crisis fund drive online Wednesday because the North Shore has been “one of the hardest hit communities in Canada” and people want to help.
“Already people are phoning to see what they can do to help,” she said.
Savage said the large donations are very important, but “it’s just as heartwarming to receive the $20 donations, the $50 donations, the hundred dollars. I mean, when things are turning so quickly and [considering] the impact that this is going to have on the economy, the fact that people are stepping up so soon to give what they can, I’m so moved by it,” she said.
In addition to the cash donations, the hospital foundation also received a donation of 200 N95 masks from a Windsor Plywood store in Vancouver, said Savage.
Savage added that’s not an indication masks are in short supply, but the hospital gratefully accepted them.
To donate to the hospital’s emergency COVID-19 response fund go to lghfoundation.com/covid19-fund/.
