The President of the Government of the Canary Islands, Ángel Víctor Torres, and his counterpart in the Cabildo, Pedro Martín, will sign today at the Hospital del Sur the second addendum to the collaboration agreement between the Canary Islands Health Service and the island institution to enable a new hospital building in El Mojón (Arona), adding up to 47,000 square meters, for new services such as adult and pediatric intensive care units, dialysis, day hospital and the expansion of the surgical area and the pharmacy area, as well as warehouses and administrative areas.
This expansion, which includes an investment of 40 million euros, as announced by the counselor Blas Trujillo in the Parliament of the Canary Islands, will turn the El Mojón center into a third level hospital, that is, with the same category as the HUC and La Candelaria , a historical claim of the southern region.
But, in addition, the agreement that will be signed today will allow the Cabildo to have an area near the public hospital to build a socio-sanitary center as compensation for the transfer of space and the structure, already built, for the expansion of the Hospital del Sur.
After the signing, it is expected that Torres and Martín, who will be accompanied by the mayor of Arona, José Julián Mena, will visit the plots attached to the center where the extension building will be built.
The Canarian president will also meet with representatives of the Southern Public Hospital Pro-Hospital Platform. Jordi Esplugas, spokesperson for the citizen group founded more than 30 years ago, told this newspaper yesterday that they attend the meeting “with the feeling that a legislature has been lost to advance in the public hospital and it will only be saved if, in the meeting of Today the citizens of the South are shown that they have been working on the functional plan, on the expansion project and on the agreement closed by the Cabildo”. Esplugas is confident that he will hear good news today, but he emphasized: “It is unfortunate that we have wasted so much time.”
