Bringing Hearts Home Cardiac Campaign Announces Major Donation
February 25, 2025
Lethbridge family makes $500,000 donation to proposed Cardiac Centre of Excellence
Champak Morzaria & daughters Mayuri Modgill and Shilpa Stocker, collaborate on gift!
Lethbridge, AB – February 25, 2025
The Chinook Regional Hospital Foundation, on behalf of its Board of Directors and the Cardiac Sciences Advisory Cabinet, are pleased to announce a donation commitment of $500,000 from the Ambika and Durga Foundations, augmented personally from Lethbridge resident and businesswoman Shilpa Stocker.
“My dad has had cardiac health challenges for which he has received the best available care from cardiologists and staff of the Heart Function Clinic at our Lethbridge hospital,” said Shilpa Stocker, on behalf of the family. “When we were alerted to this larger, more impactful vision for enhanced interventional treatment outlined by Dr. Sayeh Zielke and her colleagues, we knew we had to do all we could to make that vision a reality for this community.”
The donation advances a $30 million fundraising campaign over a 30 month period between September 2024 and February 2027.
“I am blown away by the generosity of this local family. Their charitable gesture is compelling evidence of this community’s desire to have enhanced cardiac care much closer to home,” beamed Dr. Sayeh Zielke, Cardiac Sciences Physician Lead for the South Zone of Alberta Health Services.
The project will substantially elevate the standard of cardiac health care at the two Southern Alberta regional hospitals in Lethbridge and Medicine Hat. A new catheterization lab, electrophysiology lab, two echocardiography labs, cardiac MRI and CT scanners, and many new cardiac ICU beds will take pressure off of existing ICU wards.
“I am so grateful for the cardiac health care that my parents received locally and we are fully on-board with this plan to have more interventional services here in Lethbridge”, said Mayuri Modgill.
The family has benefited from Chinook Regional Hospital Foundation’s flexibility to receive donations in a manner that aligns with their wishes and helps honour wife and mother, Mrudula Morzaria.
“We try, wherever possible, to be facilitators of generosity and doing so requires us to work with donors in structuring commitments in a truly donor-centric way,” explained CRHF Chief Executive Officer Crystal Elliott.
Death rates from cardiac health issues are not only the #1 killer of Southern Albertans, mortality rates are 26.6% higher in Southern Alberta as compared with the rest of Alberta.
The rate of heart attack is 15.5% higher than the Alberta average as well.
Media Inquiries:
Crystal Elliott
Chief Executive Officer
Chinook Regional Hospital Foundation
Crystal.elliott2@ahs.ca
(403) 388-6001
Dr. Sayeh Zielke
Cardiologist & Chair, Cardiac Sciences Advisory Cabinet
info@chinookcardiology.com
(587) 425-3246
