The process for the construction of the new Hospital of Terceira Island will be finished in December, month in which the Government of the Azores will proceed to the grant of the work, being already acquired the totality of the lands, where more than 4,5 million euros were invested.

The information was stated today, in Angra do Heroísmo, by the vice president of the Executive in a press conference meant for giving notice of the progress of the necessary procedures to the execution of the undertaking.

As Sérgio Ávila explained, the Government is going to end by the end of this month, through the Commission of Evaluation of Proposals, the business process with the three enterprises that show up to the public tender, after, in the last months, to have passed “intense negotiations”, for the improvement of the initial proposals and projects, in plenary sessions and sectoral work groups that “broached the technical and financial issues of the presented proposals”.

During this business period, the contestants presented their prior studies for the construction of the new hospital, having the base project been already delivered on the 30th of July, with all the elements that compose it, according to what is predicted in the program of proceeding of the public tender.

In next 29th and 30th the last business round happens, and the 27th and 28th of October were set for the delivery, by the contestants, of the final and definite proposals (BAFO), having the Commission of Evaluation 30 days to analyse and to value from the technical, financial and legal point of view the proposals and till the 26th of November to propose the choice of the winning proposal.

With this proceeding, and after prior audience of the contestants, it is predicted that the final report and the proposal of grant is concluded on the 12th of December in a way that the Council of the Government could proceed to the grant of the work and approve the contract of concession to be celebrated.

Sérgio Ávila showed, also, that the new Hospital of Terceira Island will be the first hospital unit of the Country to begin the construction in a private-public partnership regime for conception, construction and maintenance of the building and it will enter in functioning, “according to undertaken responsibility”, in the first term of 2011.

“The Government of the Azores has been executing this project with the biggest possible, conscious celerity that the new hospital, mercy of the volume of associate investment, will constitute an important and decisive mark in the best quality of the health cares given in Terceira Island and in the Azores”, it pointed out the governor.

The vice president of the Government showed, also, that the European Investment Bank (BEI) decided, after a visit fulfilled this week to the Region, to consider this eligible investment in the proposals of financing supported by that international financial institution.

This fact “guarantees to the contestants the access to advantageous financing conditions that will be seen in the reduction of the cost of the investment to effectuate and they confirm the rigidity, the quality and the sustainability of the process of construction of the new hospital unit”, guaranteed Sérgio Ávila.

The Hospital of Terceira Island was outlined from the current offered services in the Santo Espírito Hospital of Angra do Heroísmo and incorporating new services understood by the Government of the Azores as essential in the guarantee of the accessibility and equity of all the Azoreans in the health care.

The dimension of the new hospital unit “is spacious and functional, with a great increase of the current capacity of answer”, said the governor, disposing of 45 Offices for Appointments, of 216 beds of general admissions, in double bedrooms with private bathroom and 25 beds of Special Admission. There are also rooms for the parents with possibility to spend the night, in the paediatric rooms.

The urgency will reckon with three acting zones: General Urgency, Paediatric Urgency and Obstetric / Gynaecologic Urgency and it will be also endowed with specific installations to support the air evacuation of patients.

The External Appointment will be organized in groups of similar services, with common supports and, in their majority, offices for several kinds of appointments, as to allow a more efficient rationalization of the use of the spaces, of the equipments and of the human resources, having been divided in five areas: Paediatrics, Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Medicine and Specialties, Surgery and Specialties and Day Units / Hospitals.

A growing ambulatory care of the health cares is reflected in the creation of a very wide set of spaces functionally conceived for Day Hospitals. This functional unit is composed by seven Day Hospitals, one Dialyses Unit and by the Physical and of Rehabilitation Medicine.

The new hospital will also incorporate a Technological Center, which will support the admission and the outpatient department areas, reducing the needs of dislocations for other more differentiated hospitals.

The predicted diagnosis and therapeutics areas are Imagiology, Special Examinations and Treatments, Clinical Analyses, Molecular and Cytogenetic Biology, Hemodynamic and Angiocardiography, Hyperbaric Medicine, Nuclear Medicine and Radiotherapy.

The Hospital of Terceira Island will have a significantly superior surgical capacity to the current one, allowing more easiness in the marking of interventions and reducing or even removing waiting lists, being constituted by six operating rooms (four rooms, one for ambulatory care surgery and one for urgencies), a room of birth deliver and two of dilation.