Lethbridge's Jack Addy Cancer Centre receives largest donation ever

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The Jack Addy Cancer Centre in Lethbridge has received a $500,000 private donation, the centre's largest donation to date.

The Alberta Cancer Foundation and the Jack Addy Cancer Centre announced Friday morning that the centre's “tranquil outdoor space” at Chinook Regional Hospital will be renamed the “Amir and Saqer Manji Healing Garden” in honour of the Manji family's donation.

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The Manji family says they are grateful for the care and compassion Amir received while he was being treated for stage 4 metastatic prostate cancer at Jack Addy Hospital. Amir, a Coaldale businessman who died in 2018, spent a lot of time in the cancer center's outdoor space during his hospital stay, the family said in a news release Friday.

“We want to thank the Alberta Cancer Foundation and the Cancer Centre in Lethbridge for the love and care and for looking after us so well,” said Amir's wife, Saker. “We never expected to receive this kind of love and care from people we've never met. We are so grateful.”

Nimisha Manjhi, one of the couple's daughters, said: “The effort, compassion and hard work that healthcare workers put into their work is another reason why we chose to give back to society.”

“We want to support the great work they do. My mother spoke many times about how grateful she was to her amazing oncologists, radiation therapists and nurses. The compassion and care at Jack Addy Cancer Center made all the difference. It meant the world to us.”

Natasha Manzi, another of the couple's three daughters, said it was moving for her and her two sisters to see their parents' names inscribed in the garden.

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“We feel so blessed to be part of a family and community that really believes in service and the mindset that prosperity is a blessing that comes from serving others,” said Natasha Manji, who flew in from Ottawa for Friday's announcement. “It's so emotional and humbling to have the opportunity to be here today with the people who have really supported us for so long here in Lethbridge and the members of the Jack Addy Cancer Centre who have become such a precious community to us,” she said. “We're so grateful for the opportunity to give back.”

Prior to the Manzi family donation, the largest donation to Jack Addy was $100,000.

Alberta Cancer Foundation CEO Wendy Beauchene said donations like the one from the Manzi family allow the foundation to stay abreast of the latest technology in cancer treatment.

“In Alberta, we have a strong desire to have the best health care as close to home as possible, so without donations like these, we just can't make that happen,” Beauchene said.

The Alberta Cancer Foundation says the donation will significantly improve medical equipment and oncology training programs at the Jack Addy Cancer Centre, one of four regional cancer centres in Alberta serving patients across southern Alberta.

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The PTW BeamSCAN, which improves the precision and safety of radiation therapy for cancer patients, was one of the new medical devices purchased with the family's $500,000 donation, according to a news release.

“The PTW BeamSCAN is a robotic scanner that enables our medical physics team to perform detailed measurements of the radiation beams we are using to treat patients undergoing radiation therapy at the Jack Addy Cancer Centre,” said Charles Kirkby, senior medical physicist at the centre and adjunct professor in the Department of Oncology and Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Calgary.

“This information is used to program our treatment-planning computers, making every radiation treatment at Jack Addy as safe and effective as possible. And the BeamSCAN is easy to set up and efficiently performs these scans, allowing us to spend more time doing what we do best – treating patients.”

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