Prince George Motors (FORD) has donated $25,000 to the Spirit of the North Healthcare Foundation.
The money will help fund a maternal operating room at the University Hospital of Northern BC.
“Currently there are eight [operating rooms] and what happens is whenever a high-risk mom or an emergency C-section comes in, quite often those surgeries can be postponed to allow the mom to go into a surgical ward,” explains Spirit of the North CEO Judy Neiser.
The overall cost of the project totals $322,000.
The new room will help keep at-risk moms out of the general operating rooms, which previously would push back other surgeries. Neiser says at-risk moms will greatly benefit from this.
“This is moms that are coming in with either an unexpected C-section, multiple births, or something that can be considered high-risk and that’s over 20% of the births that happen so it’s pretty substantial numbers that it will affect.”
UHNBC is the birthing centre for the north, averaging over 1,150 birth at the hospital each year. The maternal operating room was recognized as the greatest area of need for the funding to go into.