The Windsor Genetics Outreach Clinic has a new home.
The clinic is relocating to the John McGivney Children's Centre.
The clinic is part of London Health Sciences Centre's Medical Genetics Program of Southwestern Ontario and operated for a number of years out of the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit building.
Dr. Victoria Siu is Medical Director of the program.
She says the clinic is increasing its staffing along with the move.
"We've been able to hire a genetic counsellor — that is a masters trained genetics counsellor who will be able to provide the support and counselling for our patients," says Siu.
She says the clinic helps with rare conditions that are difficult to diagnose.
"For rare disorders, which is what we are primarily seeing, they may have been to a number of specialists and having no way of unifying the diagnosis to put together all of the different problems they've been having," says Siu.
She stresses the need for the clinic's services is growing.
'We have certainly seen a huge explosion in terms of the number of referrals we get to genetics because there's so much more access to genetic testing and a much greater awareness of the importance of genetics in disease," says Siu.
Dr. Siu says there is a geneticist at the centre two days a week, seeing ten to 15 patients. She says the names of many of the conditions they work on are not well known, but one of the most well known is Downs Syndrome.