Children’s Miracle Network of Northern New York at Samaritan Medical Center awarded a total of $54,629 Thursday to the North Country Children’s Clinic and six hospitals.

Representatives from all organizations that received a grant said without the Children’s Miracle Network’s support, their programs and services wouldn’t be as successful today.

North Country Children’s Clinic Marketing Director Elaine P. Garvey said CMN has had a relationship with the Children’s Clinic for about 12 years and continues to support the nonprofit with “purchases of major equipment.”

“They’ve been a big help to things we couldn’t afford,” Mrs. Garvey said.

The network awarded the clinic $9,905 Thursday to purchase seven Welch Allyn integrated wall-mounted diagnostic systems, which allow clinic pediatricians to take a child’s vital signs privately.

“Right now doctors carry it all in a medical bucket,” said Sarah M. Colligan, development and outreach manager. “Now we’ll have separate ones. Before, they’d go into a larger room where kids were waiting to get weighed. It was less patient privacy.”

Julia R. Rose, Massena Memorial Hospital Foundation executive director, accepted a grant of $3,495 Thursday for a phototherapy blanket to enhance pediatric care in the hospital’s maternity unit.

Typically, when a newborn has jaundice, he or she is put under a light to help build up color pigment, causing separation during the first moments after birth, she said.

“This will allow a baby to get the same treatment but also bond with parents,” Mrs. Rose said. “They can be swaddled in it. The department is very excited. This is our first one.”

Other awards are:

■ $6,373 to Canton-Potsdam Hospital, Potsdam, for a phototherapy system to treat infants with jaundice and a stander unit for the physical therapy unit.

■ $8,356 to Carthage Area Hospital, for a self-contained infant warmer. The Carthage Area Hospital Foundation is paying for half of the unit, which has a total cost of $16,713.

■ $10,000 to Claxton-Hepburn Medical Center, Ogdensburg, for an infant warmer with resuscitation equipment, to be used primarily for babies born via Caesarean section in the operating room. The total cost is $21,326.24. The Kinney Drugs Foundation granted the hospital $7,500 toward the equipment, and the hospital’s foundation and birth center fund covered the $3,826.24 balance.

■ $6,500 to E.J. Noble Hospital, Gouverneur, for a perfusor space syringe pump system, to be used in the safe delivery of medications to pediatric patients.

■ $10,000 to Lewis County General Hospital, Lowville, for an infant hearing system to provide hearing tests to newborns. The hospital will pay the remaining $10,621 balance.

CMN Executive Director Jocelyn D. Mejias also presented Samaritan Medical Center President and CEO Thomas H. Carman with the network’s final $250,000 payment of its $1 million pledge to the hospital’s “Advancing Healthcare, Close to Home” capital campaign for its $65 million expansion and renovation project.

Samaritan Medical Center also received $133,053 in other grants from CMN for various pediatric equipment for the hospital.

Thousands of readers like you have made Northern New York Newspapers the number one ranked website* for local news and sports coverage in the north country.

You can continue on to this article in a few seconds, or you can visit one of our websites:

• Watertown Daily Times
• The Ogdensburg Journal
• Daily Courier-Observer