Family hospital officially handed over to Ministry of Health |10 August 2017

Guests touring the hospital to view the facilities

The Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan Foundation has officially handed over to the Ministry of Health the newly constructed family hospital located on Perseverance.

It was the director general of the Khalifa Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan Foundation, Mohamed Haji Al-Khoori, who handed over the H.H. Khalifa Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan Family Hospital to the Minister for Health Jean-Paul Adam in the presence of Ahmed Al-Niyadi, United Arab Emirates chargé d’affaires, high dignitaries and top health ministry officials.

The Foundation took charge of the hospital’s construction last year and in less than 10 months completed work on a high functioning, high quality family hospital which aims to primarily provide peaediatric, gyneacological and maternity services.

In his opening remarks Minister Adam reflected on the high quality of standard the new hospital will bring to the services offered by the ministry, stating that the quality of equipment and facility matches his ministry’s ambition.

“This donation recognises our ambition to raise the quality of health care in our country. We have already ensured universal health care access and this kind of facility represents the new generation of facilities we wish to have based on a higher standard possible and which is being benchmarked against the highest standards of health internationally,” he commented.

The unveiling of the plaque was followed by a tour of the 1769.77m² sized hospital where the delegation was able to view some of the modern amenities and facilities which include inpatient rooms, isolation rooms, two operating theatres, X-Ray machine, laboratory, seven consultation rooms, audio booths for hearing tests, playrooms, among others.

It currently has 30 beds for inpatients, four beds for the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and four beds for the operating theatres.

Dr Danny Louange, the chief executive of the Health Care Agency, said that because the hospital is a donation its total cost is unknown to the ministry but he estimates the cost to be around $30-40 million USD.

According to Dr Louange the donation is only the first phase of the project.

“Given that this is only the first phase, we would be unable to provide the services the hospital set out to do because we only have 30 beds available. So in the first phase the hospital will provide only some specific services,” he said.

Consequently the hospital will temporarily be used to house patients from the female medical ward at the Seychelles Hospital which will soon be undergoing renovation.

The ministry also plans on moving English River health centre’s family planning, ante-natal, post-natal and child health services to this new building.

These services will not be delivered on a regular basis but rather it will be scheduled on specific days.

“This is a modern facility and a model for all future projects the ministry will undertake,” he said.

The official opening of the hospital will be done in approximately six weeks following the completion of the surfacing of roads and introduction of an SPTC bus route.

The H.H. Khalifa Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan Family Hospital on Perseverance

Unveiling the plaque to mark the official handover of the hospital