The Hospital for Sick Children, also known as Sick Kids, is a world-renowned children's hospital in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is a teaching hospital affiliated with the University of Toronto. It was founded in 1875, inspired by the example of Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, England. The hospital is located a block south of Queen's Park off of University Avenue.
Funding
Medical treatments at Sick Kids are covered by publicly funded health insurance, as is the case in all Canadian hospitals. The hospital foundation maintains a fund, called the Herbie Fund, for patients not covered by canadian health insurance. The fund was established in 1979 to provide for the treatment of a seven month old patient from Brooklyn, New York named Herbie Quinones.
History
During the spring of 1875 a group of Toronto women led by Elizabeth McMaster rented an 11-room house for $320 a year. They set up six iron cots and "declared open a hospital 'for the admission and treatment of all sick children.'" Their first patient, Maggie, was a scalding victim, and came in on April 3.
"In that first year, 44 patients were admitted to the Hospital. Sixty-seven others were treated in outpatient clinics." [1]
In 1876 the hospital moved to larger facilities. In 1891 the hospital moved from rented premises to a building constructed for it at College and Elizabeth streets where it would remain for sixty years. This old building, known as the Victoria Hospital for Sick Children is now the Toronto area headquarters of Canadian Blood Services . In 1951 the hospital moved to its present University avenue location. The hospital underwent its last major expansion in 1993 with the construction of a glass-roofed atrium behind the main building.
Contributions to medicine
The hospital was an early leader in the fields of food safety and nutrition. In 1908 a Pasteurization facility for milk was established at the hospital. Researchers at the hospital invented the infant cereal, Pablum. The research that led to the discovery of Insulin took place nearby at the University of Toronto and was soon applied at the hospital. Doctor Frederick Banting, one of the researchers, had served his internship at HSC and went on to become an attending physician there.
Recent events
Recently, Sick Kids helped save the life of 10-year-old Djamshid Popal from Afghanistan by treating his heart problem, after the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario diagnosed his illness and referred this patient. [2]
External links
Bibliography
Sick Kids; the story of the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.
Braithwaite, Max. McClelland and Stewart, 1974. ISBN 0771016360