from The NY Daily News:
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/09/19/2010-09-19_disabled_kids_under_attack_foes_of_a_hospitals_ expansion_are_giving_their_neighb.html
Disabled kids, under attack: Foes of a hospital's expansion are giving their neighborhood bad name
Errol Louis

Sunday, September 19th 2010, 4:00 AM


I hope, pray and expect that the decent and sensible majority of residents in Bayside, Queens, will rise up and put a speedy end to an ugly attempt by a handful of their neighbors to cramp and cripple St. Mary's Hospital for Children, one of the city's jewels.

Founded by an Episcopal order in 1870, St. Mary's (now nonsectarian) moved to its current location - tucked away in a quiet residential neighborhood - in 1951. It specializes in acute care and rehabilitation for children, serving thousands of the most severely injured kids you will ever see.

A great many children in our city who fall victim to horrible, life-threatening fires, shootings or car accidents end up at St. Mary's, along with a large number of premature babies.

In 2008, for instance, a gas explosion in Harlem killed 29-year-old Alouf Hassan and left her four children homeless and near death. Hassan's 3-year-old daughter was blinded, two other daughters were severely burned - and her 6-year-old daughter, Duaa Al Ghaithi, lost three fingers and suffered burns over 60% of her body.

Duaa's father, Rassas Al Gaithi, who'd lost everything in the explosion, stayed in a homeless shelter while she healed at St. Mary's.

Ten months and five operations later, Duaa walked out of the hospital clutching her dad's hand.

St. Mary's makes such miracles happen on a daily basis.

On a recent visit, I met half a dozen or so boys and girls, all under 5 years old, many of them paraplegics, who happily rattled around the hallways of the hospital with wheelchairs, breathing tubes, walkers and oxygen tanks.

They were like kids anywhere else - showing me their toys, grabbing my recorder, watching cartoons.

A corps of patient nurses held and fed tiny babies, many of them born prematurely, who could barely move or breathe. Just under 100 boys and girls stay at the facility for an average of three to five months, with hundreds more visiting each day for rehabilitation and after-school programs.

Everywhere I looked, there were wheelchairs stored in hallways and treadmills and other rehabilitation equipment tucked into every nook and cranny. A special branch of the public school system to serve kids undergoing long-term care at St. Mary's operates from converted trailers.

Kids currently bunk four to a room - not nearly enough space for children who often need bulky special machines, round-the-clock monitoring and a chance to be with visiting family members.

St. Mary's, in short, is bursting at the seams and in need of a major upgrade from its 1950s-era facility.


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Hospital Expansion Sorely Needed, but neighbors oppose.
"During the day, there are kids riding bicycles down the hallway. We use the stairwells as physical therapy," says Leslie Johnson, St. Mary's Director of Communications. "We use every bit of space to help kids meet their milestones."

That's where the planned expansion - and the fight to stop it - comes in. The hospital isn't asking to increase the number of kids it serves; it just wants to create more space so that children aren't squeezed four to a room at night and have space to walk, eat, exercise and attend class during the day.

Although the plans call for a doubling of the hospital's square footage, architects hired by St. Mary's went through extraordinary, expensive contortions to confine the growth to the same height, depth and width of the existing facility.

Instead of building on additional land, for instance, St. Mary's will construct inside of an existing courtyard, creating an annex that will be nearly invisible to everyone except motorists passing behind the facility on the Cross Island Parkway.

All the paperwork is in order: The state Health Department issued a Certificate of Need authorizing the expansion, and the state Dormitory Authority signed off on the plans as creating no negative environmental impact. But a handful of hard-hearted, not-in-my-backyard residents are filing a lawsuit to block the expansion. Four plaintiffs - James Chin, Karen Pender, Dominick Withanachihi and Frank Caselli - are suing St. Mary's, the city and the state, alleging the expansion will lead to more traffic and create "negative visual impacts" for them.

With the case in court, the hospital is now spending money on lawyers instead of building space to help the most desperately hurt children in New York.

That's a situation that shames a community - and places a burden on local leaders to step in and help inject some sense and compassion into the heads and hearts of a selfish few.



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