New father Kriti cuddles his newborn son with therapeutic skin-to-skin contact. Born weighing less than two pounds, Arjan spent his first three months gaining strength at Sunnybrook’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).
This spring, Sunnybrook invited photojournalists Ron Haviv and Christopher Morris inside the hospital for an up-close look at the courage, determination and true grit of patients and their medical teams as they defied impossible odds together.
Sunnybrook cares for some of the sickest patients in Ontario. Many of them come to Sunnybrook looking for care they can’t find elsewhere.
Every patient has a story to tell, and so too do the medical teams who care for them. Every story is different, but each has something in common: courage. For patients, it’s the grit to face their toughest days without turning back.
For friends and family, it’s the resilience to push ahead when they can’t imagine taking another step. For hospital staff and researchers, it’s the determination and the tenacity to keep searching for a solution despite impossible odds.
A new campaign offers a glimpse into these stories through the lenses of photojournalists Ron Haviv and Christopher Morris. Renowned for their ability to capture the human cost of war on the frontlines, they brought the same sensitivity and skill to document the human moments that happen every day on the front lines at Sunnybrook.
Featured on these pages are just some of the stories of courage that Haviv and Morris witnessed. What is not immediately apparent in the photos is the importance of private investment – philanthropy that makes life-saving medical advances possible. From treating brain disease with sound waves instead of a scalpel, to novel procedures that eliminate the need for open-heart surgery, to game-changing radiation technologies that target tumours with pinpoint precision, generous donors assist Sunnybrook to bring first-in-the-world procedures to patients.
In showing the human side of such breakthroughs, this campaign hopes to inspire more people to give because donor generosity helps the staff at Sunnybrook be there for patients and their loved ones when it matters most.
View the campaign: Where Impossible Becomes I’m Possible.
