KUWAIT: An artist’s rendition for the new Sabah Hospital. — sshic.com

KUWAIT: Assistant secretary general for planning and development at the Secretariat General of the Supreme Council for Planning and Development Bader Al-Refai said 47 percent of the new Sabah Hospital project has been completed and the project is expected to be concluded next year with a total cost of KD 179 million.

Speaking to reporters yesterday during a field visit to the project site organized by the programs and plans follow-up department, Refai said the visit covered all strategic projects included in the development plan to check the percentage of achievement and compare it to set schedules. He added that the new Sabah Hospital project is one of these projects and that the visiting team met MoH and the executing company's representatives and watched a presentation on the phases realized.

Refai explained that the project comprises of a main building with a basement, a ground floor and 12 floors with a 512-bed capacity, in addition to 105 ICU beds. He added that the hospital will also include casualty, radiology, general surgery, specialized surgery, nuclear medicine, physiotherapy and respiratory departments, in addition to 72 OPDs, pharmacies, reception, labs, storage areas and a heliport. Refai said that the hospital administration building comprises of eight floors and that the nuclear medicine department would be equipped with state-of-the art waste processing technology.

The follow-up department manager Suad Al-Awadh said that the visit aimed at checking how much of the project - that commenced in 2014 and is expected to be concluded in July 2019 - had been completed .

Emergency surgery

In a humane gesture, Health Minister Sheikh Dr Bassel Al-Sabah ordered a surgery to be immediately conducted on a bedoon patient with an expired security ID. The patient was hospitalized at Al-Dabbous Cardiology Center and was admitted inside the intensive care unit (ICU) in an unstable condition. The minister met his treatment team and ordered an exemption to save his life. In a different concern, Sheikh Bassel said relevant ministry sectors had been assigned to discuss developing social media mobile applications to be used by patients in booking appointments, obtaining medicine and saving test results according to their civil ID number, which would help facilitate access to such data whenever needed.

KD 1 million

The Ministry of Health (MoH) owes a number of local hotels over KD 1 million, said well-informed health sources, noting that the hotels had repeatedly urged MoH to pay the overdue bills. The sources added that MoH formed a special committee to look into the matter within the coming weeks, adding that the sums were the fees of hiring conference halls and booking rooms for guest consultants and participants in various conferences. Notably, MoH's conference budget last year was KD 2 million, spent on 38 conferences and 20 workshops, ie KD 50,000 per conference and KD 10,000 per workshop.

Food safety

The Public Authority for Food and Nutrition's Chairman Essa Al-Kandari stressed that the authority's liabilities intervene with those of other government bodies and that the authority is working hard on solving the problem. Speaking to reporters following an inspection tour of butcheries, the fish market, restaurants and stores in Souq Mubarakiya and the fish market in Sharq, Kandari called for joining efforts with several state departments to tackle street vendors. Kandari added that yesterday's inspection tour resulted in filing two citations to fishmongers selling foul fish at the Sharq fish market and six to other stores in Mubarakiya.

By Meshaal Al-Enezi and A Saleh