With the help from National Bank Financial, Gatsby’s Grill House in Wallaceburg and countless local residents, the Sydenham Current kicked off the media hostage festivities for the Chatham-Kent Family Health Team – Wallaceburg Medical Centre expansion project.
Combined with the matching funds from National Bank Financial, the Sydenham Current helped raise $5,400!
Wallaceburg resident Lynn Tapp, the secretary for the Chatham-Kent Family Health Team, said the family health teams are intended to be a place where a doctor can walk in and be a doctor.
“We take care of everything else,” Tapp said. “We take care of the nurses, the secretaries. We provide all sorts of extra health care professionals that the doctor has available to him right there, without having to call around and find that health professional. It makes it easier for the doctor to come in, sit down and be who he is.”
Tapp added: We have proven that if you build the clinics the doctors will come, because two more are coming to Dresden, we already have two in Wallaceburg and two more are coming in the next few days. We brought two new doctors to Ridgetown, we just recently opened a clinic in Blenheim and we’ve already had doctors buzzing around that one. We hope to take even more patients off the orphaned patient list.”
Tapp said $200,000 is needed to renovate the space next to the centre at 30 McNaughton Avenue.
“This will make the space available for the two new doctors and it will make the space for a third if we manage to land one,” he said. “It will also have a space for the health care professionals to use for teaching, like smoking cessation, diabetes and diet.
Tapp said that space will be available for people in the community to rent in order to hold meetings as well.
“We’re hoping the public will see fit to help bring more doctors here,” he said.
Watch for more media hostage days from our fellow media companies in the coming weeks.
