Wednesday, 01 September 2010
The money is the last of the money left over following completion of the Bay of Plenty Energy Cancer Centre at Whakatane Hospital. The centre was estimated to cost $1.1 million, but Project Hope fundraising exceeded expectations and raised $1.6 million.
Bay of Plenty District Health Board chief executive Phil Cammish last week said plans were advancing for the establishment of a six-station dialysis unit at the hospital.
Dialysis is a substitute for functions performed by the kidneys, which filter waste products from the blood.
Mr Cammish said initial designs had been drawn up and the unit would be located next to the cancer centre. The dialysis stations would be functional at the beginning of 2011, he said.
Board and Project Hope committee member Yvonne Boyes said surplus funding left over after the cancer centre was completed had already been provided to Eastern Bay Hospice ($250,000) and Plunkett ($50,000), and committee members decided providing dialysis in Whakatane with the remaining money would be the greatest benefit for Eastern Bay people.
Those who required dialysis now had to travel to Tauranga three times a week.
Mrs Boyes said diabetes was on the increase and many diabetics progressed to renal failure.
Project Hope chairman Colin Hammond said the health board had confirmed that it would proceed with the dialysis units. They would be located in the Masonic children’s ward at the centre until Whakatane’s new hospital was built, when they would be moved into the hospital proper. “This is one of the real need areas in medical treatment,” Mr Hammond said.
He said he had been advised the increasing prevalence of diabetes meant demand for renal services would increase by 10 per cent a year for the foreseeable future.
Mr Hammond said the surplus funding was a product of contractors not always invoicing the committee what they were entitled to, retailers donating materials, and John and Mary Pullar saving “many thousands of dollars” through their close supervision of the building work.
A Tauranga-based renal nurse co-ordinator will be responsible for in-centre dialysis delivery across the Tauranga and Whakatane sites. The Whakatane Hospital units will enable registered nurses at Whakatane to apply for positions and train in haemodialysis and renal nursing.