Page 427 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 14 February 2017
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As you might know, Madam Assistant Speaker, the members of the opposition here in the ACT have a growing and close association with HeartKids. One of our prominent members of the Liberal Party has recently come across HeartKids in their daily life following the birth of their young son Charlie. We pay tribute to the Clode family for the work they have done in the past 18 months or so bringing to the attention of many of us in the ACT the amazing work of HeartKids and the amazing life of their son Charlie, who has been a poster boy in the Canberra Times and elsewhere for this heroic fight against congenital heart disease.
It has been a great opportunity for me and many of us to find out more about the great work of HeartKids. Today on Sweetheart Day we encourage you to make a donation to HeartKids, which is a charity to raise money to support kids with heart disease and medical research into childhood heart disease.
HeartKids helps to employ family supports in the hospitals across Australia, including at the Canberra Hospital. The organisation runs teen camps for teenagers with heart disease and it assists families with emergency travel and accommodation. HeartKids runs information seminars and education days, providing practical assistance for families.
There is also a Hear Kids bead program in children’s hospitals across Australia to provide moral support for kids to provide a bead for every procedure they have received. Young Charlie has now clocked up over 800 beads. The bead program is a good way of showing just how invasive and complicated the lives of HeartKids are.
HeartKids provide an information hotline during working hours to provide support and advice for families affected by childhood heart disease. So far $3Â million has been provided by HeartKids for research into childhood heart disease. I would like to pay particular tribute to all the families. Eight children a day are born with heart disease across Australia and four children a week die of childhood heart diseases, not all of them congenital. Some of them are acquired.
This is a tragedy that we believe no family should face. I pay tribute to the heroic families and the heroic doctors who work in this space and to the tireless family supporters of children with heart disease on this Sweetheart Day.
University of Canberra
MS CHEYNE (Ginninderra) (5.11): On Thursday, 2 February I had the honour of representing the Minister for Health, Meegan Fitzharris, at the official opening of the new medical radiation science lab at the University of Canberra. I joined UC acting vice-chancellor, Professor Nick Klomp, and the dean of health, Professor Dianne Gibson, to mark this exciting development in health education in the ACT.
As a Belconnen resident and UC alumna, I was especially proud to participate in the opening of these state-of-the-art facilities, which will support the learning of future medical imaging students. The new medical radiation science lab is a hugely impressive research and teaching facility. The lab features a large teaching space, high
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