VIDEO: Bustamante Hospital gets more equipment from Shaggy Foundation

Damien Chang

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

LAST week the Shaggy Make a Difference Foundation handed over the equipment purchased using profits from the 2010 Shaggy and Friends Concert to the Bustamante Children's Hospital.

The donation, which comes to a total of more than US$350,000 purchased 340 new and refurbished pieces of equipment at a time when it needs them most to take care of its patients. The hospital, the only one that offers primary paediatric care in the island, takes in more than 80,000 children every year.

At the official handing over of the equipment last Friday, director of the Foundation, Rebecca Packer, extolled the efforts of all involved in the process, as well as those who had made significant contributions to the charity. Among those were seven donors who gave US$10,500 to pay for cardiac surgery for children at the hospital. But the majority of the donations were pieces of essential hospital equipment.

The Shaggy and Friends Concerts have been instrumental in saving the lives from its donations and the awareness the concert promotes. The concerts have raised a total of US$650,000, but that pales in comparison to the US$2,000,000 needed by the hospital.

Dr Michelle Anne Richards-Dawson, senior medical officer of the hospital, was very happy to explain how each piece of equipment works and the importance each had in increasing the hospital's ability to provide quality healthcare.

"It is our duty to make sure we can overcome any limitations," and that with the help of The Shaggy Make a Difference Foundation it would be possible.

Dr Lambert Innis, an anaesthesiologist at the hospital, proclaimed he was glad to have "state-of-the-art medical equipment at my disposal" so he would no longer have to second guess anything when dealing with his patients.

Though he was happy to be working with lots of new equipment, Dr Innis was simply glad that "the level of awareness has gone to just another level."

Dr Loxley Wolfe, a dental surgeon at the hospital, was also glad because of the donation of new dental chairs. "The dental chairs used to not go up and down and were flat. Surgeons had to sit on the floor durin the surgeries. This is going to make life a lot easier for the patients," she stated, "Every little bit counts."