Hospital for Sick Children (Toronto)
The Hospital for Sick Children (HSC), corporately branded as SickKids, is a major pediatric teaching hospital located on University Avenue in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Affiliated with the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Toronto, the hospital was ranked the top pediatric hospital in the world by Newsweek in 2021. The hospital's Peter Gilgan Centre for Research and Learning is believed to be the largest pediatric research tower in the world, at . History During 1875, an eleven-room house was rented for a year by a Toronto women's bible study group, led by Elizabeth McMaster. Opened on March 1, it set up six iron cots and "declared open a hospital 'for the admission and treatment of all sick children.'" The first patient, a scalding victim named Maggie, came in on April 3. In its first year of operation, 44 patients were admitted to the hospital, and 67 others were treated in outpatient clinics. In 1876, the hospital moved to larger facilities. In 1891, it moved from rented premises to a purposely-constructed building at College and Elizabeth Streets. It would remain there for 60 years. The building, known as the Victoria Hospital for Sick Children, is now the Toronto area headquarters of Canadian Blood Services. In 1951, the hospital moved to its present University Avenue location. On its grounds once stood the childhood home of the Canadian-born movie star Mary Pickford. In 1972, the hospital became equipped with a rooftop helipad (CNW8). From 1980 to 1981, the hospital was the site of a series of baby deaths. In December 2022, the hospital was attacked by the LockBit ransomware gang, who apologized 13 days later and provided a decryptor to the hospital for free. Contributions to medicine The hospital was an early leader in the fields of food safety and nutrition. In 1908, a pasteurization facility for milk was established at the hospital, the first in Toronto, 30 years before milk pasteurization became mandatory. Researchers at the hospital invented an infant cereal, Pablum. The research that led to the discovery of insulin took place at the nearby University of Toronto and was soon applied in the hospital by Gladys Boyd. Dr. Frederick Banting, one of the researchers, had served his internship at the hospital and went on to become an attending physician there. In 1963, William Thornton Mustard developed the Mustard surgical procedure to help correct heart problems in blue baby syndrome. In 1989, a team of researchers at the hospital discovered the gene responsible for cystic fibrosis. SickKids is a member of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), the world's largest advocacy organization representing the biotechnology industry. COVID-19 pandemic During the COVID-19 pandemic, SickKids engaged in several campaigns to promote COVID-19 vaccines. SickKids received $99,680.00 from the Government of Canada for two projects through a grant program titled "Encouraging vaccine confidence in Canada." The grant was jointly administered by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research