Surrey's population is rapidly growing, yet it is served by only one hospital, Surrey Memorial Hospital. Surrey has a population of approximately 450,000 and has one hospital; Vancouver's population is close to 550,000 and has seven.
It is clear that Surrey is chronically underfunded in this area. The overcrowded and inadequate conditions at SMH are notorious, and have led Fraser Health to expand the hospital by way of a new ER wing and a new outpatient site. However, this is not enough. It is absolutely unacceptable that Surrey Memorial Hospital has declared a "code orange" (normally reserved for extremely unusual conditions, such as natural disasters) several times over the past year because of overcrowding. What's more, 10,000-12,000 new people are coming to Surrey each year. We need to plan for the future now by working with the provincial government and strongly asserting our need for additional facilities.
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