About Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne

The Royal Children's Hospital is part of the Women's and Children's Health Care Network in Victoria.  It is a world recognised centre of paediatric excellence specialising exclusively in the diagnosis, care, treatment of and research into all diseases, disorders and illnesses peculiar to childhood and adolescence.

It is the largest paediatric hospital in the Southern hemisphere and incorporates the Royal Children's Hospital Research Foundation and the Murdoch Institute for Research into Birth Defects.

It is the major paediatric teaching centre, associated with the medical school in the Faculty of Medicine at Melbourne University.

Statistics

The Royal Childrens Hospital treats approximately 30,000 inpatients each year and provides clinical and other requirements for approximately 330,000 outpatients each year.

The operating suites at the Royal Children's Hospital perform almost 15000 operations annually and are supported by a 27 bed, high technology intensive care unit, incorporating the latest monitoring and life support systems combined with a specialised neonatal ward.

Services

Diagnostic facilities, within Royal Children's Hospital, include MRI scanning, CT scanning, angiography, ultrasound, nuclear medicine, diagnostic laboratories, and Australia's only paediatric gait laboratory.

Some of the key specialist treatment services offered by the hospital are as follows:

-Cardiac surgery, including heart and lung transplants;

-renal services, including kidney transplants;

-haematology and oncology;

-orthopaedic surgery;

-neurosurgery;

endocrinology and diabetes.

Leading the way

The Royal Children's Hospital, with your support, remains at the forefront of paediatric medicine.
Some of our achievements are:

- first discovery of rotavirus as a cause of gastroenteritis and world leader in the development of rotavirus vaccine

- Australian National Centre for cardiac transplantation

- leading centre for bone marrow and cord blood transplantation

- Australia's first gait laboratory for children

- instituted world wide changes in measles immunisation practice

- Australia's largest vaccine trials

- leading studies into cause of childhood allergy

- world experts in paediactric anaesthetics

- Australia's most comprehensive care program for neonates

- internationally recognised work on ethical and legal aspects of newborn care, especially the use of high technology

- international promoter of breast feeding of babies with critical illness and major malformations

- national reference centre for inherited collagen disease

- the development of a video EEG monitoring system which is now used internationally and has been intergrated with the best epilepsy surgical program in Australia

- landmark longitudinal study of childhood asthma into adulthood

Good Friday Appeal for the Royal Children's Hospital