Swan Hill community raises $2.6 million for new MRI machine
A community in Victoria's north-west has rallied to raise $2.6 million to help fund a new medical imaging machine for its local hospital.
For the 21,000 people living in Swan Hill, the nearest magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner is two hours away in Bendigo.
But that could change from next year after a community fundraising campaign prompted hundreds of donations and completed the hospital's fundraising target of $2.6 million to buy the machine.
Ainsley O'Bryan, who runs a caravan park in Swan Hill, said an MRI scan three years ago was the key to doctors identifying a tumour on her spinal cord.
But the diagnosis was expensive and took hours of travel.
"If we had that [MRI machine] in town [the tumour], would have been diagnosed a lot sooner," Ms O'Bryan said.
"I wouldn't have had to take days off work, I wouldn't have had to find babysitters for my children.
"Having to pay for petrol and accommodation … it really adds up."
Ms O'Bryan said she and her husband had a combined total of seven MRI scans in the past five years, all of which involved travel of between three and four hours one way to Ballarat or Melbourne.
Mallee MRI Appeal organiser Paula Starrs said starting the fundraiser was "personal".
"One of my family members needed an MRI and I was just surprised how hard it was to access one," Ms Starrs said.
"It wasn't life threatening, [but] I started thinking if it was, it's pretty scary to think how our town just didn't have this service available."
At the time she started the appeal, the hospital had put aside $1.4 million for the machine, $1 million of which had come from a local bequest.
"The hospital can't really approach the community [to raise funds], but volunteers can," Ms Starrs said.
"I made a few calls to the hospital and said, 'How much money do you have, how much do you need?' and then some friends got together over some drinks … and we formed the MRI appeal pretty much straight away."
She said the number of people who donated was "too many to count", and almost every business in the town had made a contribution.
"I think we're all just walking around on cloud nine," she said.
"We just didn't anticipate it would come this quickly, so the hospital is very excited. The staff were excited."
Volunteers at the Swan Hill Neighbourhood House provide transport for residents needing medical treatments elsewhere.
The fundraising team said up to 70 Swan Hill residents needed to access MRI scans each week.
Volunteer driver Dianne James said having a machine locally would help remove financial and travel barriers for many elderly residents.
"A lot of them, their health is not 100 per cent," she said.
"A lot of the time they don't have family or friends who can help them out at that particular time, for one reason or another."
Ms James said she knew of patients who were forced to push critical scans back by weeks because travelling long distances wasn't possible while they were in poor health.
"With a local machine, they can be in and out within an hour or so and go home and rest," Ms James said.
Swan Hill District Health interim chief executive Chloe Keogh said she was overwhelmed by the community support.
"I've got a lot of gratitude for just how this donation has occurred in such a short amount of time," she said.
The hospital is midway through a state-funded $65 million redevelopment, including the construction of a radiology area.
Ms Keogh said the hospital would need to apply for additional state government funding to 'fit out' the radiology area, which she hoped would include an x-ray machine and a CT scanner.
Ms Keogh said the hospital had workers with the skills to operate the MRI machine and she expected it to be operational running by mid-2026.
The ABC asked the Victorian Health Department why it did not fund the MRI machine for Swan Hill hospital and whether the government would provide funding to complete the planned radiology room.
The department declined to comment.
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