The 24th annual Festival of Trees Red Deer held their celebration breakfast this morning (December 12th), and announced they have raised $1.2 million this year for the Red Deer Regional Health Foundation.

Those funds will go towards automation services in the Hematology and Microbiology departments within the lab at the Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre.

Executive Director of the Health Foundation Iaian Park explains exactly what that means.

“It’s going to the lab and they are going to automate some of the producers they do. I may be off but I believe they do about 3 million samples a year and I believe its’s by hand. So this automation will improve that”

He goes on to say that this equipment will be essential to the more than 450 thousand people located in the Central Zone for Alberta Health Services.

“Without the funding from the Festival this year that equipment wouldn’t be in Red Deer. Their budgets don’t allow them for them to purchase that equipment, its several hundred thousand dollars some of these pieces that they are bringing in. I think sometimes the lab is overlooked, when they are doing samples, the samples go down (to the lab), and the sooner the physician gets that sample back, the sooner they can make a diagnosis.”

They were able to raise enough to also support another program at the NICU called E-Critical, which aims to deliver a single information system to all NICU's in the province, so things like charts and health information regarding babies and moms in emergency situations can be transferred across the province on one system.

The Festival has raised over 15 million dollars to date.

(Executive Director of the Health Foundation Iaian Park at the Festival of Trees Celebration Breakfast on Dec. 12th, 2017)