Albury Wodonga hospital boosts its paediatric services thanks to community grants

Sick kids, and their parents, in Albury Wodonga have access to more services at their local hospital thanks to the sophisticated equipment bought with community grants.

Young Albury mum Sarah Ackerly had no idea the lifesaving equipment used in the traumatic birth of her daughter Ambler was thanks to her employer’s generosity until months later.

“My partner was reading a newsletter and saw that the ultrasound (used in the birth) was bought by the hospital thanks to a community grant from my club,” Ms Ackerly said.

“They wheeled in a machine to check both baby and myself and she was delivered in 20 minutes,” she said. “If not for that ultrasound they wouldn’t have been able to see what was happening and things might have been different.”

Now aged three, Ambler was born not breathing with the umbilical cord around her neck.

The ultrasound was just one piece of equipment Albury Wodonga Health Paediatric Ward bought with some of the $400,000 donated by the Soldiers Sailors & Airmen (SS&A) Club Albury.

Sarah Ackerly with her “little firecracker” Ambler, aged three, whose is a healthy young girl thanks to lifesaving equipment Sarah’s employer SS&A Albury donated to the local hospital. Picture: Simon Dallinger

SS&A CEO Gerard Darmody said the club’s donations since 2019 totalled almost $400,000 since 2019 had enabled the hospital to buy nursery and neonatal resuscitation cots, surgical equipment and a neonatal incubator and even sofa beds so parents can stay with their sick children.

“We wanted to provide them (the paediatric ward) some extra funding for equipment that helps kids at a higher level than probably would have been given with government funding alone,” Mr Darmody said.

“We’ve had an affinity with the paediatric unit for a long time and it’s about giving them that metropolitan level of equipment that may help families stay in their regional environment, rather than having to go to Melbourne or Sydney or Canberra (for treatment).”

Some of the donations have been used to purchase pediatric surgical instruments, allowing the hospital to perform operations locally. They have not only expanded the unit’s clinical experience but also helped retain staff.

Originally published as Albury Wodonga hospital boosts its paediatric services thanks to community grants