TIJUANA – A Shriners Children’s Hospital is coming to this city.

The facility will begin operating in February with 20 beds in one floor of the new building of the Children’s Hospital of the Californias in Otay Mesa, said Luis Alonso Suárez , the director of the Shriners club in Tijuana.

Over time, the organization will construct its own hospital on the same grounds, he added.

He said it made sense to open a facility in Tijuana given that 80 per cent of the patients treated at the Shriners Children’s Hospital in Sacramento are from Baja California. Not all are from the state, rather they travel to Baja California from other parts of Mexico and then head to Northern California, he explained.

The hospital in Sacramento has treated around 2,500 youngsters from Baja California since 1965, when a Shriners club opened in Tijuana. Its members began helping patients’ families to obtain a humanitarian visa to travel across the border and helped with transportation, Suárez said.

He said that 92 per cent of those patients required surgery or treatment for congenital or hereditary conditions and the rest were burn victims.

The Shriners have 22 children’s hospitals in the United States, Canada and Mexico. The Tijuana facility will be the organization’s second in Mexico, with the first located in the nation’s capital.

The hospitals serve children up to age 18 who need specialized medical care and rehabilitation services for congenital conditions, orthopedic ailments, burns and other health problems.

Every child is treated free of charge by the philanthropic organization, which began in 1870 in New York and today has clubs in the Americas, Europe and Southeast Asia.

When the hospital opens in February, it will only provide care for children with congenital conditions. Other services will be added over time.

The Shriners will build the hospital with support from the private sector in Tijuana as well as the Mexican government, Suárez said.

More information is available in Spanish at this site or in the Facebook/shriners.tijuana

Omar.millan@sandiegored.com