An impressive flood of community support for Surrey Memorial Hospital (SMH) – which has gone unacknowledged in the public eye for years – is most recently dedicated to helping raise $1 million for the expansion of the Family Birthing Unit.
“It’s Surrey’s best-kept and perhaps most inspiring secret: The waves of community members who invest in Surrey Memorial Hospital because they passionately believe in and trust the quality of service we offer to a unique and diverse demographic,” said Jane Adams, president and CEO of the Surrey Memorial Hospital Foundation.
Expansion of the Family Birthing Unit will help provide patient comfort and privacy and increased capacity so that women in Surrey and the Fraser Valley will be able to deliver their babies close to home.
The 33-room Family Birthing Unit is the largest single-room maternity care facility in B.C., and SMH is the second largest hospital in BC with the second-most births of any B.C. hospital at 4,200 a year.
Given that South Asian newborns represent almost half or 45 per cent of those births, a significant groundswell of donor support is coming from the South Asian community.
A South Asian radio station, RedFM 93.1, raised $800,000 through a radiothon last fall – one of the largest one-day fundraisers in Canada.