LA LAGUNA (TENERIFE), Oct. 21 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The president of the Canary Islands, Ángel Víctor Torres; The Minister of Health, Carolina Darias, and the Minister of Health in the Autonomous Government, Blas Trujillo, together with the Mayor of La Laguna, Luis Yeray Gutiérrez, visited the Canary Islands University Hospital Complex (HUC) on Friday, being one of the nine Canarian hospitals that are beneficiaries of the Inveat Plan, promoted by the Ministry of Health thanks to the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, and will mean that it has ten new high-tech equipment with an investment amounting to 14 million euros.
Accompanied by the manager of the HUC, Mercedes Cueto, they were in the Radiotherapy Oncology service, which will have two new linear accelerators for the treatment of cancer patients and a new CT scan.
This will make it possible to replace the current one, which in the first nine months of the year has carried out 972 diagnostic tests, although it is equipment with several years of service that will now be renewed to avoid obsolescence.
The President of the Canary Islands, in his speech to the media, referred to the “time to recognize the effort and commitment to public health” of the Canary Islands and central governments, and highlighted the importance of these new facilities and services of hospitalization that have been put in place at the HUC.
Torres recalled that the regional Executive has hired 7,000 more toilets in this legislature, which is “the largest hiring” of professionals in public health achieved on the islands.
In addition, he valued the increase of more than 300 hospital beds in 2022, a figure that in just one year is equivalent to what was added in the previous 10 years.
THE NEW LINEAR ACCELERATORS
The two linear accelerators, which will replace those that are currently in operation after several years of use, will provide advantages in the treatment of patients as they are state-of-the-art equipment.
One of them, the one that allows adapted radiotherapy to be carried out, will be the first accelerator of its kind in the Canary Islands.
Its uniqueness is that it admits changes during the treatment, according to the results and the evolution of the patient.
The second team is focused on radiosurgery and extracranial stereotaxic radiotherapy (SBRT), a high-precision irradiation technique that makes it possible to irradiate with ablative doses, the Government reports in a note.
So far this year, the Radiotherapy Oncology service has carried out a total of 12,584 treatment sessions for cancer patients with linear accelerators.
In addition, the Hemodynamic Cardiology service was visited, which will have a new room through the financing of the Inveat Plan.
In these rooms, diseases of the coronary arteries, other parts of the heart, such as the valves, and congenital defects are diagnosed and treated. The Hemodynamics Unit of the HUC Cardiology Service performed more than 1,900 procedures in the first nine months of the year.
Likewise, through the Inveat Plan, other equipment for diagnosis and treatment of pathologies with a great health impact, such as neurological, cardiac and rare diseases, are acquired.
In this line there will be two new gamma cameras, image capture devices for the study of diseases in Nuclear Medicine and two vascular angiographers and a neurological angiographer due to renovation, to avoid obsolescence.
This endowment is extended with an additional neurological angiograph. Through this diagnostic imaging test, the study of blood vessels that are not visible by conventional radiology is performed.
The execution of the Inveat Plan in the Canary Islands entails an investment of more than 38.5 million euros, which allows the renewal of 40 pieces of equipment until 2023 with the acquisition of high-tech goods that are destined for all the health areas of the archipelago.
88 NEW BEDS
Ángel Víctor Torres, Carolina Darias and Blas Trujillo, together with Mercedes Cueto and Luis Yeray Gutiérrez, also visited the new hospitalization building, the so-called ‘Body’ D of the hospital complex, whose renovation was recently completed and with it 88 new beds are added. hospitalization, after an investment of 3.1 million euros by the Canary Health Service (SCS).
The last three floors were launched last September, with 44 new beds located on floors 3 and 4.
These are added to the other 44 that completed their renovation and were occupied in 2021, while the fifth floor is used for offices, meeting rooms and changing rooms. In total, the new building, annexed to the main one and which had been in disuse for more than 15 years, has a total area of 1,900 square metres.
PROJECT IN PROGRESS: EXPANSION OF THE HOSPITAL WITH THE CONSTRUCTION OF ANOTHER BUILDING
The Ministry of Health has already projected the expansion of the HUC through the construction of a building that will be located on a 9,200 square meter plot within the hospital perimeter.
The site is attached to the Outpatient Activities building and the car park, which will make it possible to take advantage of the existing network of galleries (currently in disuse) to connect the new infrastructure with the rest of the HUC buildings.
To achieve this goal, a feasibility study has already been carried out and the functional plan for the new building has been drawn up, which incorporates organizational and functional innovations based on cutting-edge trends and which will enable the expansion of the HUC’s care, teaching and research capacity.
This new infrastructure will house and increase the capacity and size of certain support services. The importance of this work lies not only in creating a new building to have more spacious facilities for the areas that are transferred (maternity and child support services), but also in developing the reform and expansion project for the HUC, freeing up space to rearrange the services and improve care quality in all buildings.
The feasibility study has estimated a building of about 31,000 square meters, with a budget of 45 million euros and the incorporation of 180 new hospital beds. The execution will be carried out in two phases.
EXPANSION OF THE SERVICES PORTFOLIO
Apart from these plans for improvement in the HUC, the General Budgets of the Canary Islands for 2023 are expected to include the acquisition of a PET (positron emission tomography) for the Nuclear Medicine Service of the HUC, a high-tech piece of equipment that does not until now it is available in the hospital, so the benefits and the portfolio of services are increased.
This equipment will involve an investment of more than three million euros, with funds from the Government of the Canary Islands, and its main applications are diagnosis in Oncology and Neurology, especially in the study of neurodegenerative and cardiological diseases.
Until now, HUC patients who require PET technology studies are referred to the Hospital Universitario Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria, whose Nuclear Medicine service is a reference.
REACT-EU FUNDS
The HUC will also have four million React-EU funds for the purchase of new equipment that will be used for the Otorhinolaryngology, Paediatrics, Neurology, Ophthalmology, Cardiac Surgery and Rehabilitation services, among others, as well as the surgical block and the acquisition of two chillers.
With these funds, the center is also endowed with 299,600 euros for the reform and expansion of the available space that allows the location and start-up of the neurological angiograph.
