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Sudbury-based firm awarded PET contract at HSN

Build North Construction to build stilted home for 4,500-square-foot suite
300318_pet_suite
A Sudbury-based company whose motto is “Building a Quality North” has been awarded the $5.1-million contract to construct the bunker that will house Health Sciences North’s positron emission tomography/computed tomography scanner.

A Sudbury-based company whose motto is “Building a Quality North” has been awarded the $5.1-million contract to construct the bunker that will house Health Sciences North’s positron emission tomography/computed tomography scanner.

A letter of award was given to Build North Construction Inc. last week to construct the 4,500-square-foot suite that will be attached to the nuclear medicine department at HSN’s Ramsey Lake Health Centre.

Construction is scheduled to begin this spring and is expected to take nine months to complete.

Build North has constructed a number of schools in Greater Sudbury including Holy Cross Catholic Elementary School. It also built Sorgini Eye Institute and Barr Plastic Surgery, two private clinics in prominent locations in the city.

HSN president and chief executive officer Dominic Giroux made the announcement about the contract award in a late-night post Thursday on Facebook. Giroux said the Ministry of Health and Long-term Care’s health capital division had approved the award of the contract for the PET/CT suite.

Giroux said the total cost of the project, including the purchase of a PET/CT scanner, is $8,970,200. That includes $4,628,500 allocated by the ministry to HSN for construction.
Sources tell sudbury.com that the contract was awarded a day or two before Giroux’s Facebook post. It still has not been officially announced.

The Health ministry funds 90 per cent of the construction costs of health care facilities, with organizations such as HSN picking up 10 per cent of the tab for building them.

Construction and design of the PET/CT suite will cost a total $5.1 million leaving the hospital and the community to raise about $470,000.

The cost of a PET/CT scanner, a sophisticated diagnostic imager used to diagnose and stage some cancers and other diseases, is $3.8 million, That money was raised by the Sam Bruno PET Committee and the Northeast Cancer Centre. 

HSN will purchase a GE Discovery PET/CT scanner and it is expected that 60 scans will be done at the hospital in the first year of operation.

Thousands of Sudburians and residents of Northeastern Ontario were determined to keep alive the dream of the late Sam Bruno to have a PET scanner located in Sudbury. Bruno, 55, died in July 2010 after a two-year battle with colorectal cancer and with the ministry to have PET used more widely, and to get a PET scanner for Sudbury. More than 20,000 people signed petitions demanding the scanner for the Northeast.

Bruno’s campaign was kept alive by his family and friends, and by Nickel Belt New Democrat MPP France Gelinas, her party’s Health critic. Gelinas presented the names of thousands of people supporting the PET cause 200 at a time in the Ontario Legislature.

Two anonymous donations of $500,000 put the Bruno PET fund over the top in December 2016. They were announced the same day then Health Minister Dr. Eric Hoskins announced $4.6 million in funding to build the PET suite.

While citizens kept the PET campaign in the forefront, HSN and Health ministry officials seemed cold to the idea until former NDP MP Glenn Thibeault defected to the provincial Liberals and won Sudbury riding in a February 2015 byelection.

In December 2015, Hoskins and now Liberal MPP Thibeault announced $1.6 million in operational funding for a PET/CT scanner before the money for construction was allocated and all the money for a scanner was raised.

In December 2016, HSN released architectural drawings for the PET/CT suite, which will be built on stilts to line up with the second-floor nuclear medicine department.

Thibeault and others have said they expect the scanner to be operating by the end of year, an ambitious target given the fact a shovel has not yet gone into the ground for the project.

Carol Mulligan is an award-winning reporter and one of Greater Sudbury’s most experienced journalists.


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