The Northern Alberta Children's Hospital Foundation was created in 1978 with the intention of having a specific children's hospital built in Edmonton. The foundation was a backer of the Child Health program and in 1992, the name was changed to Children's Health Foundation of Northern Alberta to better show their support. Later, after the hospital opened, the name was changed to the current "Stollery Children's Hospital Foundation". Around 1989, after consultations with pediatricians and other interested residents of Edmonton, Bob and Shirley Stollery gave the donation that kicked off the campaign to build a state of the art hospital. The campaign, which was run by the foundation, was successful in raising over $10 million. At the time, it was recognised that a free standing hospital would not be economically viable, requiring, in addition to construction costs, a large maintenance and operations budget. It was decided that the hospital would be built within the grounds of the University of Alberta's Walter C. Mackenzie Health Sciences Centre and co-exist with the University of Alberta Hospital. Originally known as the Stollery Children’s Health Centre, the name was later changed to the Stollery Children's Hospital to reinforce the fact that it is completely separate and independent of the University of Alberta Hospital. In February 2001, doctors at the Stollery were able to successfully revive Erika Nordby, a 13-month-old child that was hypothermic. Nordby had wandered outside, where the temperature was about, wearing only a diaper, and collapsed in a snow bank. When the girl was found, sometime after 3 am, her body temperature was and she had no pulse. Paramedics were called but could not revive her while transporting her to the hospital. After about 90 minutes, doctors were able to get her heart operating again; in total, she had spent about two hours clinically dead.
Services
The hospital is noted as a "centre for specialized pediatric services", as well as being the "referral centre for pediatric cardiac surgery in Western Canada and for organ transplants. The hospital contains a neonatal intensive care unit, a pediatric intensive care unit with an Extra Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation program, a Pediatric Thrombosis Program and multiple other clinics geared towards children. Biomedical engineers at the hospital developed the Sub-Arctic Intelligent Neonatal Transport Incubator. This is a neonatal incubator designed to operate in temperatures below freezing where other incubators are unsuitable. It is used throughout Alberta, British Columbia, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. The hospital is part of the Canadian Neonatal Network, an organization composed of neonatologists and neonatal health professionals from across Canada. The Stollery was the first hospital in Western Canada to have the ECMO device, a pediatric thrombosis program, replace a valve in a child's heart without having to undergo surgery and perform pediatric surgery to do an intestinal transplant. The Stollery was the first hospital in Canada to perform open heart surgery and deliver a baby at the same time, and the first to perform the first pediatric auto-islet transplant. It is the site of Canada's Pediatric Centre for Weight and Health. It is also a major North American referral centre for the ventricular assist device known as the Berlin Heart. The board is made up of a president and CEO, Mike House, chair, Marshall Sadd, vice-chair, Richard Kirby, fifteen members of the board of trustees, including Ray Muzyka, an investor, entrepreneur, physician and co-founder of BioWare and four ex-officio members.
