Rocanville Thrift Store donates $10,000 to CT Scanner
February 6, 2024, 9:36 am
Joey Light
The board of Rocanville Thrift Store made a donation of $10,000 to Moosomin and District Health Care Foundation for the CT Scanner proposed for the region.
The donation brings the total raised for the CT Scanner to $135,000 before official fundraising has even begun.
The donation is the second to the CT Scanner fund from the thrift store. The group also gave $10,000 last year.
Melissa Ruhland, reeve of the RM of Rocanville and a member of the Healthcare Foundation board, accepted the $10,000 donation.
The board of the Thrift Store meets once a month to discuss where donations should go, and decided the CT Scanner is a top priority.
“There are 10 of us on the board and we have a meeting once a month and that’s where we discuss it,” says volunteer Linda Bock. “If there’s a letter that comes to us about people in need of stuff or something like that, then we’ll discuss it and help if we can, and then if we have enough money we do a bigger donation to something important for the area.”
Last year the thrift store took in about $63,000, with the help of community support and a strong volunteer base.
Rocanville Thrift Store has no paid staff and over sixty volunteers that do everything to keep the thrift store running as well as it does. Along with many other donations, since 2007 they have donated $88,700 to the Health Care Foundation.
The volunteers said they enjoy helping out to make these donations possible.
“Well I think we’re all such a good bunch here,” says Bock. “We’re just like a family and we love each other’s company. Most of us are retired but not all of us. I counted up and there’s over 60 of us, they’re all volunteers behind the scenes. It feels good to help with these donations, it’s why we do this because someone needs some help.”
How much of a differnce do these donations make for the health care foundation? Melissa Ruhland says they have a big impact.
“Well actually it’s a great domino effect because it brings awareness to other organizations and businesses and we get more donations from them, and personal donations. People see the donation in the paper and they donate as well,” she says.
“So whenever this happens, we see a little spinoff from it and it’s really nice to see that. And it’s great for a community to be able to come together and say, ‘This is from the whole community donating to a cause.’ It comes back, hopefully, to them in their own community as far as medical care and hopefully soon. We’re getting closer. This will put us at $135,000 without soliciting any kind of donations,” she said. “We haven’t officially started fundraising, because the government hasn’t made an announcement yet, but people are so strongly behind the idea of a CT Scanner the donations are coming in anyway.”
Ruhland says the CT Scanner is important for the entire area.
“It will definitely help in stroke cases like the doctors have mentioned, and in traumatic accidents. Moosomin has a very high percentage of accidents being along Highway 1 too. So it will help any of those people who are going to be in need of care and then it will go hand-in-hand with the airport because you’ll be able to do that CT scan and then get that person flown to where they need to get care very quickly. It is really important for the whole area. The doctors say it will literally save lives.”
While the province is expected to pay most the cost of a scanner if it is approved, the cost of renovations to the Southeast Integrated Care Centre and training for staff will be covered by the Health Care Foundation.
“We’d have to insulate three walls plus the ceiling with lead and it would be a major insulation program,” Ruhland said. “That will be a big cost.”
Ruhland said work is already being done on securing employees for the potential CT scanner.
“One concern is that some centres have had trouble staffing their CT Scanners, so we’re already working on that. Management is starting to talk to the union now about who’s out there, who’s in courses right now and who would be available in two years. The timing will be the tricky part—having staff trained and ready to go but I think everybody’s on board.”
There has been an effort to convince the provincial government of the need for a CT Scanner in the Moosomin region and local leaders are waiting to hear back from the provincial government on the issue.
Statistics on medical imaging show the longest wait times for CT Scans are in southeast Saskatchewan, with Estevan, Yorkton, and Regina having some of the longest wait times.
