Cape Town -The Christiaan Barnard Memorial Hospital will be moving to a new site.
After 33 years of operating in the CBD in a building originally meant for commercial use, the hospital will move to a former derelict parking lot on the Foreshore on December 5.
The hospital will remain the same size, at 248 beds, but the new 16-storey building, adjacent to the second phase of the CTICC and Chevron building, which it will later absorb, will offer new services such as an oncology unit, rehabilitation facility, day-hospital 11 theatres, a women's health centre, a renal dialysis unit, pathology labs, day-theatre complex, family medical and dental centre, and a radiotherapy bunker in the basement.
The hospital can be expanded up to 400 beds and will have a 61-bed ICU, with paediatric and neonatal beds.
It has been touted as one of the greenest hospitals with technologies such as electricity-generating lifts and double-glazing for energy efficiency. Netcare chief executive, Dr Richard Friedland, said the site at the corner of Rue Bartholemeu Dias Plain and DF Malan Street, had been chosen from among 32 others.
“The design principles under-pinning the construction of the new building were centred around flexibility and enabling growth,” he said.
Cape Argus