The Ministry of Health of the Government of the Canary Islands has started, through the Canary Islands Health Service (SCS), four new hospital infrastructure projects on the islands of Gran Canaria, Tenerife and Lanzarote, for the construction of three new buildings and the complete rehabilitation of several entrance floors. On the island, a building will be erected next to the Juan Carlos I Hospital.
In total, in the Canary Islands, 342 hospital beds were added in the same year, which represents the largest increase in public beds in the last decade. These infrastructures will serve to reinforce hospital care, which will contribute to the recovery of healthcare activity that was lost during the pandemic. This endowment is intended to increase the resilience of the public health system in the face of eventual outbreaks of Covid-19 or other emerging diseases, preventing them from affecting the care of the remaining pathologies.
The four projects executed by the SCS will, together, the creation of 15,800 new square meters of care surface, which will be provided with the equipment and technical means necessary to start operating at the end of the works, which will require a public investment of 47,3000,200 euros.
The emergency declaration of these actions responds to the urgent need to expand the physical and technical capacity of the hospitals that have endured greater healthcare pressure since the Covid-19 pandemic began, particularly those in the Greater Health Areas Canaria, Tenerife and Lanzarote, in which there has been an overcrowding of beds by patients with coronavirus during the successive epidemiological waves and in which alternative spaces have been enabled, sometimes in non-strictly sanitary structures.
The projects in execution will allow that, in a short period of time, stable, adequate and multipurpose infrastructures are available to respond to exceptional situations, such as the current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, and that hospitals once again allocate their facilities, human resources and technical means to ordinary care activity, which has suffered the effects of care for pathology due to Covid-19.
This recovery of ordinary healthcare activity is directly related to the objectives of the Aborda Plan, which seeks to reduce waiting lists by 30% and place delays below 90 days. The plan, which has a financial record of 200 million euros and a duration of two years, requires the SCS to concentrate care resources on treating non-CoviD pathology from now on.
The projects in execution include the construction and commissioning of the following buildings. On the one hand, a new hospitalization building next to the Juan Carlos I Hospital, for patients referred from the university hospitals of Gran Canaria, with an area of 4,440 square meters and an estimated endowment of 98 beds. The amount of the investment will amount to 14,500,000 euros and the planned execution period is six months.
Also a hospitalization building next to the Doctor José Molina Orosa Hospital, in Lanzarote, with 5,100 square meters of surface and an approximate number of 100 beds. The total planned investment amounts to 15,500,000 euros and the planned execution period will be seven months.
In addition, another hospitalization building in the Nuestra Señora de Candelaria University Hospital Complex, in Tenerife, with 4,400 square meters of surface and an estimated endowment of 98 beds. The estimated investment amounts to € 12,760,000 and the execution period will be six months.
And finally, the rehabilitation and reform of floors 3, 4 and 5 of building D of the Complejo Hospitalario Universitario de Canarias, in Tenerife, with a total area of operation of 1,900 square meters and an estimated endowment of 46 beds.
