UCI pediatrics given anonymous $5M gift

An unnamed benefactor has given UC Irvine $5 million to bolster its Department of Pediatrics, which has garnered national acclaim in neonatology, genetics and child neurology.

The donation is the largest in the department’s history.

The gift comes from an anonymous Los Angeles businessman, whose friends, John and Dana Agamalian of Newport Beach, were helped by services at UC Irvine Medical Center’s neonatal intensive care unit.

The Agamalian’s 4-year-old twins were born premature, and the center’s staff is credited with saving their lives.

The funds are likely to be used to establish new programs in developmental and behavioral pediatrics, said Dr. Feizal Waffarn, chairman of the department of pediatrics, in a news release.

“This is a big endorsement that we have earned the confidence and the respect of the people of Orange County,” Waffarn said.

The neonatal intensive care unit at UCI is already capable of treating the county’s most severely ill infants. More than 500 babies are treated there annually, and in 2005 the county’s first quintuplets were born at the unit.

Over the last six years under Waffarn’s tenure, research and federal grants to the department have more than doubled to $17.7 million.

The new money will enable the department to “turn our vision into reality and make advances in health care that would not otherwise be possible,” said Dr. David N. Bailey, UCI’s vice chancellor for health affairs, in the release.