The 43rd CHEO Telethon raised $604,053 after a two-week campaign to raise money and awareness for Ottawa’s children’s hospital. Your donations will help support the life-changing care, state-of-the-art medical equipment, and advanced treatments that CHEO’s patients and families depend on. “Government funding can help the hospital get by day-to-day, but for us to really think about innovative solutions and innovative ways of delivering care, all the solutions that our system needs right now as it’s under some pressure, that is going to take support from the community,” said CHEO Foundation president and CEO Steve Read on Saturday. The CHEO Telethon showcased the stories of six children and youths and their journeys at CHEO. You will meet Charley, Mirai, Elsa, Mila, Zianna and Charlotte. “We’re very lucky to have some amazing families help us tell the story of CHEO to the community,” Read said. CHEO president and CEO Dr. Vera Etches says she’s been “really impressed with the dedication of the team” since she joined the hospital. Etches says the fundraising is “essential” to help transform the children’s hospital. “Running our day-to-day business, we are balancing our budget, being as careful as we can with everything that comes in and delivering value for money, but to be able to have something new, to invest in new approaches, we really do rely on donors,” Etches said. CHEO broke ground last year on a new integrated treatment centre that will provide care to children and youth living with complex medical, developmental and behavioural needs, connecting them to the care they need, closer to home. Once completed, the new six-storey, 200,000 sq. ft. facility on Smyth Road will serve approximately 13,700 children and youth with special needs, along with their families, funded by CHEO and the Ontario government. “I’m definitely hearing from families, we need to address that the system feels very fractured,” Etches said. “We’re more than a hospital – we’re building a system with our partners. We have more partners than ever that are joining together and really thinking about how can we decrease our wait times for kids. This is important to us.” The project is expected to be completed in 2028. Last year’s CHEO Telethon raised $755,240 during the two-week campaign of raising money and awareness about CHEO.
