Great food, excellent entertainment, an enjoyable evening out and an opportunity to support an important, worthwhile cause - have you got your Gala ticket yet?
The Health Foundation is playing host to the 15th Annual Gala event and this year, returning to the very first theme, the evening will be centered around Greece.
"A Greek evening is about the food, the music and the people," details John Stamatinos, Treasurer for the Yorkton-Melville Greek Community, a partner in the upcoming event.
And the food will be exceptional promises Ross Fisher, Executive Director of The Health Foundation.
Complete with Lamb and chicken mousaka and fabulous desserts, "The evening will feature an authentic Greek menu that you could order ina restaurant in Athens. Our goal is to make the evening as authentic as possible."
Rounding out the evening with complementary portraits, cocktails, dancing and a silent auction Fisher says guests are sure to have a great time. And at the same time they will be helping out with a very worthy cause.
Proceeds from the event are directed towards the purchase of needed medical equipment in the community and in fact, since the start of the gala more than $300,000 worth of important equipment has been purchased to improve local health care.
"It's just a great way to have a little fun and at the same time help raise money for some specific equipment that will benefit our friends and family," says Fisher.
This year proceeds will help to buy new equipment for the operating rooms in the Yorkton Regional Health Centre (YRHC). The number of surgeries performed at the YRHC has increased steadily over the last several years says Fisher. Six years ago 70 per cent of residents in this health region requiring general surgery had their surgery done in Regina or other locations.
"Today, we have seven surgeons working out of Yorkton and they conduct just over 3,400 surgeries per year; 95 per cent of our general surgery is performed in Yorkton."
New equipment helps to modernize operating rooms; improving patient safety and recovery times from surgeries.
"As well, this newer equipment is in use in most operating rooms in the province, and our surgeons want to use current equipment. They would be working with this equipment if they worked elsewhere. This equipment should make it easier to keep our current surgeons and to recruit additional doctors," adds Fisher.
"It will also expand the surgical services available to our residents. For example, one of the pieces of equipment we want to buy, the Ligasure Device, will be a completely new piece of equipment for Sunrise Health Region. It will increase the range and amount of laparoscopic surgery our surgeons can do, and will shorten the recovery time needed for many surgeries.
"If we want to keep the physicians we have, especially specialists like surgeons, we have to be prepared to provide them with reasonably current equipment.
The benefit is not just to the specialists in the regional health centre. Our general practitioners in Yorkton and the region want to have specialists in their medical community; they want their patients to be able to access specialty tests and services locally."
The end result is a general benefit for everyone as a whole.
The 15th annual Gala will take place on Saturday, October 23 at St. Mary's Cultural Centre in Yorkton. For tickets or further details call 786-0506 or visit The Health Foundation website at: www.thehealthfoundation.ca.
