The Rotary Club of Peterborough Kawartha had donated $30,000 to help fund the cost of building a bathroom for patients at the Brock Primary Care Clinic in downtown Peterborough.
Located at the Brock Mission homeless shelter at 217 Murray Street, the clinic offers primary medical care for anyone experiencing homelessness — not just current shelter clients.
The clinic was co-founded in May 2022 by nurse practitioner Lee-Anne Quinn and Dr. Janet Kelly, who serves as the clinic’s collaborative physician. Along with Quinn and Dr. Kelly, nurse practitioners Anna Jamieson and Ginny Veselskiy, and Dr. John Beamish (retired medical director of Hospice Peterborough) currently volunteer at the clinic.
By providing primary care for people experiencing homelessness that addresses infections and chronic illnesses before they require serious medical intervention, the clinic alleviates stress on the emergency department at the Peterborough Regional Health Centre.
However, since it opened, the clinic has been operating without a bathroom that patients can use. Since many of the patients served by the clinic are not residents of the shelter, the lack of a bathroom has made it difficult for the clinic to obtain urine samples from those patients.
Clinic patients are asked to walk around half a kilometre to use the public washroom at the Peterborough police station on Water Street, and they often do not return to the clinic with their urine samples.
The lack of bathroom facilities also means the clinic cannot offer a shower to a homeless client.
Along with the $30,000 donated by the Rotary Club of Peterborough Kawartha, the Peterborough Family Health Team has also contributed $30,000 to the $60,000 cost for the bathroom, which will be built by Mortlock Construction.
“We are pleased and proud that we could fund this important project that assists those experiencing homelessness in our community,” says Kawartha Rotary president Paul Landau, in a media release. “I would like to thank community members who assist with our fundraising efforts by purchasing items during our Christmas auction or attend our annual summer Kawartha Ribfest.”
