Children's hospital in Bucharest, Romania, to get new, EUR 50 mln building, instead of existing 90 year old one

Bucharest will have a new children's hospital, the first emergency hospital for child care built in the last 30 years by the municipality in Bucharest. Due to open in the summer of 2015, the new Victor Gomoiu hospital will be built in the yard of the current children's hospital, which runs in a building dating from 1927. It will cost some EUR 50 million to build and equip the six – floored hospital, and the Bucharest Municipality will cover all the costs. The new unit will also host the first pediatric university hospital in Romania, and all sections will be learning bases for university and post university students. The existing hospital works with 250 people, our of which 35 are doctors. When the new building is finished, there will be 450-500 employs, out of which 100 will be doctors. The number of beds will also be up from the current 159 to 278. The built area will be of 19,000 sqm, and there will be 10 Operating Rooms, five times more that at present. The hospital will have the most modern facilities for heart surgery and pediatric cardiology in Romania. The existing building on Basarabia boulevard will be consolidated and connected to the new one via a glass footbridge, and be used mainly for teaching purposes, with teaching halls, libraries and laboratories. The Bucharest mayor Sorin Oprescu, who attended the beginning of work together with the Prime Minister Victor Ponta late last week, was asked by the media for guarantees that once the hospital is finished, a similar situation as at three other hospitals, Grigore Alexandrescu, Marie Curie sau and Bagdasar-Arseni, where new sections were built but were never opened for lack of equipment, or personnel, will not happen again. He said that he is the guarantee, being a surgeon himself, and the entire medical world, especially the youth, who are waiting for the chance to be doctors at home, not only abroad. The mayor referred to the increasing exodus of Romanian doctors in search for better paid jobs. editor@romania-insider.com (photo source: Sorin Oprescu on Facebook)