Furniture, Equipment from Blythedale Children’s Hospital to Aid Children in Haiti

Feb. 3, 2012 - PRLog -- Blythedale Children’s Hospital’s healthcare mission is going international. Through the combined efforts of Blythedale and the Yonkers-based AFYA Foundation, a shipment of 5 cribs, 6 desks, 15 wheelchairs, 25 wooden preschool chairs and 10 plastic preschool chairs from Blythedale’s previous inpatient hospital were loaded onto a moving truck destined for Haiti on February 3, 2012. Blythedale opened a new $65.3 million, 56,000 square-foot inpatient hospital building in December 2011, and the donated furniture was previously used in the former units.

The donation, organized by Blythedale’s Engineering Director Owen Brady and the AFYA Foundation will be shipped for use in a hospital in the Caribbean nation. A magnitude 7.0 earthquake devastated Haiti in January 2010, destroying much of the island’s infrastructure and medical facilities.  The AFYA Foundation is a not-for-profit organization based in Yonkers, New York, that partners with hospitals, health organizations, corporations, and individual households to collect vital medical supplies for foreign health care centers and communities in need.

“Blythedale is committed to improving the health and quality of life of children,” said Lena Cavanna, Blythedale’s Director of Community Relations. “Through this donation, we are helping the children of Haiti receive needed medical care in a country still reeling from a terrible disaster.”

About Blythedale Children’s Hospital
As New York’s only freestanding, specialty children’s hospital, Blythedale Children’s Hospital is dedicated to improving the health status and quality of life of children with complex medical illnesses and disabling conditions through superb multi-disciplinary patient care, teaching, research, and advocacy programs.  Blythedale’s board-certified physicians, nurses, and other clinical staff (social workers, respiratory therapists, clinical pharmacists, Child Life specialists, etc.) and New York State’s largest hospital-based pediatric therapy department (PT, OT and Speech) work together to provide intensive and innovative multi-disciplinary clinical and therapeutic care to help children achieve their medical and rehabilitative goals for independent living, and return to their communities.  Blythedale is also the only Hospital in New York State with its own, on-site public school district, the Mt. Pleasant Blythedale Union Free School District. For more information about Blythedale Children’s Hospital, visit http://www.blythedale.org.

# # #

Photo Caption:
Cribs formerly used at Blythedale Children’s Hospital are loaded onto a truck destined for a hospital in Haiti. Blythedale was pleased to collaborate with the Yonkers-based AFYA Foundation to organize the shipment, which also included wheelchairs, to benefit children in the Caribbean nation.