BIA gives hospital boost
A $250,000 donation from the Greektown on the Danforth Business Improvement Area will help create a bigger and better pediatrics unit at Toronto East General Hospital.
The money, which was raised from the Pilaros Taste of the Danforth, will largely go toward the new unit’s interior such as furnishings and equipment.
The hospital’s current pediatric unit is located in the outdated original building and will be moved to a new nine-storey patient care centre that is being built as part of a $210 million redevelopment project. Currently, the pediatrics unit is scattered throughout the building, said the hospital’s chief of pediatrics, Dr. Constantine Petrou.
“There is no more space to expand or create any new clinics, or even expand on the current clinics,” he said. “This new pediatrics clinic will allow us to consolidate all the pediatric clinics in one area.”
In addition to new furnishings and equipment for the unit, the $250,000 will also help to expand some programs including the hospital’s follow-up clinic.
“We only have Tuesdays and Wednesdays now,” Petrou said.
The new space will allow the hospital to offer the follow-up clinic five days a week.
The BIA’s director of operations, Faiza Ansari, said the board of management committed the money specifically toward the pediatrics unit because they knew it was crucially needed.
The allocation of the money has already commenced, Ansari added, saying they already gave money the last two years.
“A portion of our proceeds every year from our festival traditionally goes to the hospital,” Greektown’s chairman, Constantine Voidonicolas said said in a media release.Toronto East General’s manager of corporate and community relations, Justin Van Dette, said the money would contribute to keeping the current unit running as well as establishing the new one, which he said the hospital hopes to have opened by 2015.
The donation ensures the Greektown BIA leaves its mark on the area in another way.
“That facility is going to be known, once it’s completed, as the Pilaros Taste of the Danforth Greektown BIA Pediatrics Ward,” Ansari said.
“It will be named in honour of (Greektown).”
