SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, July 4. (EUROPE PRESS) –
The Government of the Canary Islands has invested a total of 14 million euros in the new multipurpose building of the Hospital de La Candelaria, which will come into operation after the summer with a total of 88 beds, 74 for multipurpose hospitalizations of more than 24 hours, although preferably prepared for the care of COVID patients and other similar pathologies, and another 14 more for the care of patients with stays of less than 24 hours.
The details of the property, annexed to the hospital and with an area of almost 5,000 square meters, have been exposed to the media by the President of the Government, Ángel Víctor Torres, the Minister of Health, Blas Trujillo, the director of the SCS, Conrado Domínguez, and the manager of the center, Natacha Sujanani.
In addition to the space for hospitalization, consultations and offices, the center will have areas for Admission, training and medical and nursing work, as well as warehouses, catering and maintenance services.
In the design of the building, the possibility of dividing the space into different hospital areas according to the characteristics of the patients who have to be cared for at all times has been taken into account, according to a note from the Executive.
From now on, and once the works are finished, the operation of its water supply installations, hot water, boilers, electrical network, telecommunications network, air conditioners, pressure controls, detection and extinguishing of fires and generator set, as well as its integration with the other facilities of the Hospital de la Candelaria as well as the processing of all the necessary documentation for its commissioning.
Speaking to journalists, the president remarked that, with this visit, the ones carried out in recent days to the buildings annexed to hospitals in Gran Canaria and Lanzarote “which will alleviate and complement them after almost 50 million investment” culminate.
Torres was “especially happy” with this step and stressed that, thanks to this effort and these new dependencies, “more hospital beds will be offered in the Canary Islands in 2022 than in the last 12 years.”
The Chief Executive stressed that, at the return of this summer, this building in La Candelaria will already have patients, which will mean a “quantitative and qualitative” leap in health care, especially from Covid.
EIGHT MONTHS OF WORKS
Torres indicated that, although the pandemic has caused “a lot of damage, fear, anguish and deaths around the world, it has also shown the strengths of those who have opted for public health, and has opened up opportunities to improve infrastructure, which is what has been done on the islands”.
In this sense, he considers it very relevant that, “in just 8 months, there is now a building annexed to the La Candelaria hospital where there used to be a plot of land.”
“Now we have these four modern, bright and prepared floors. There are no precedents like this in the Canary Islands, so I congratulate the construction company as I did with those who created the buildings in Lanzarote and Gran Canaria,” he stressed.
In addition, he recalled that the University Hospital of the Canary Islands (HUC) will also have two new floors.
Torres believes that Canarian society “should be proud of the work of its health workers” and, in his opinion, what is needed is to respond with adequate infrastructure.
“This opportunity could have been taken advantage of or let it pass, we have wanted to take advantage of it from the public sector by investing in health and reinforcing the workforce in the summer, months in which operations and consultations usually drop, to maintain the pace of activity and the ‘Plan Aborda ‘ in order to reduce waiting lists with 1,700 toilets,” he said.
This project includes, in addition to the building annexed to the La Candelaria Hospital, three other hospital infrastructures in the Health areas of Tenerife, Gran Canaria and Lanzarote.
On the other hand, the works that are being carried out on floors 3, 4 and 5 of the ‘D’ building of the HUC affect a total area of 1,900 square meters and will provide 46 more beds for this hospital, an action that has an investment of 3.1 million euros.
MORE BEDS IN ONE YEAR THAN IN THE LAST DECADE
“The objective is that when all the works of the four buildings are completed, 342 hospital beds will be 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 the assistance activity that has been lost during the pandemic”, explained the president.
Together, these four projects will entail the creation of 15,800 new square meters of healthcare area, which will be equipped with the equipment and technical means necessary to start operating at the end of the works, which will require a public investment of 47.3 million of euros.
The Minister of Health, Blas Trujillo, explained that “these new infrastructures will allow the recovery of ordinary health activity that is being affected by the pandemic and simultaneously with the attention to covid-19 infection, as well as improving the response to future epidemic outbreaks. and strengthen the care capacity in each of these islands”.
The public hospitals of the SCS and, in particular, those of the Health areas of Gran Canaria, Lanzarote and Tenerife, have occupied a large part of their beds, since the start of the pandemic, with COVID patients, so these new infrastructures They will alleviate the care burden caused by SARS-CoV-2, while allowing the activity of university hospitals to normalize.
