Nearly a decade after Sam Bruno started his battle with colorectal cancer, and subsequently, to get a PET scanner in Sudbury, his friends and family were able to celebrate Tuesday when they finally received the funding to purchase the medical imaging device, and provincial support to build a suite at Health Sciences North in which to house it.
Bruno died in 2010, but the PET Scanner Fund Committee in his name continued to lobby all levels of government for a PET scanner in Sudbury, and to raise the funds necessary to achieve his dream.
Nearly a year after they announced $1.6 million in annual funding to operate a PET scanner at Health Sciences North (in December 2015), Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins and Sudbury MP and Energy Minister Glenn Thibeault said Tuesday the province would provide an additional $4.6 million to build a specialized suite for a PET scanner at Health Sciences North.
Following that announcement Tannys Laughren, executive director of the Northern Cancer Foundation, said two anonymous donors had donated $500,000 each to help purchase the PET scanner.
Those two donations pushed the Sam Bruno PET Scan Fund past the proverbial finish line, and will allow it to purchase a $3.5-million PET-CT scanner.
Brenda Tessaro, a longtime member of the Sam Bruno PET Scan Fund Committee, said the anonymous donations came as a complete surprise.
“We had no inkling that had occurred,” she said. “We were looking at months down the road, if not a year, for another million dollars, so for these two donors to step up to the plate and finish this off, it is so heartfelt. We can't thank them enough.”
Hoskins said the hospital plans to put out a request for proposals for the new PET scanner suite as soon as possible, and added it should take around 12 months to complete the build.
The suite, which will require extra thick concrete walls to prevent radiation from leaking into other parts of the hospital, will be built on stilts and attached to the hospital's nuclear medicine department on the second floor of the Ramsey Lake Health Centre.
