After a decade marked by lack of investment, Lisbon’s IPO cancer hospital is preparing for “three major building works” to take place in 2017, and which will cost “around €5.2 million”.
“To guarantee that there are no delays in treatments, the Army has been called in”, reports national tabloid Correio da Manhã, featuring a photograph of dark green army containers already set up outside the hospital.
Said Lt. Col. João Santana: “We are guaranteeing a permanent support and logistics team which will be a major plus-point for the technicians involved”.
The containers will function as a temporary outpatient surgical unit which expects to undertake “around 2,000 operations over the next nine to 12 months”.
Hospital director Sandra Gaspar told CM “there will not be any risks” with the changes.
Meantime, building work will be going ahead to the central surgical block (€3.5 million), the unit for medulla transplants (€1 million) and the imunohemotherapy service (€700,000).
Reporting on the transformation of the hospital’s ambulance carpark, Diário de Notícias says the containers look like an “exercise in Lego” in “giant version, and far from being a joke”.
The containers contain a “disinfection room, an operating theatre, recovery area and have all the necessary equipment for performing operations”.
