Smart hospital for Chateaubelair

Residents and visitors to Chateaubelair and the surrounding areas will soon have the benefit of a smart hospital, as the existing facility at Barracks Hill, Chateaubelair, will be upgraded.

Work is expected to begin soon and the community was updated at a town hall meeting on October 21, held at the Golden Grove Learning Resource Centre, which coincidentally, will house the hospital while the works are ongoing.{{more}}

Officials from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), Ministry of Health, Wellness and the Environment, and the National Emergency Management Organization (NEMO) were on hand to update residents and provide answers for their queries and concerns. The project is funded by the United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID). The project is titled: “Smart Hospitals: Smart Health Care Facilities in the Caribbean – providing safer, greener health facilities to deliver care in disasters.”

The hospital will be retrofitted with solar panels for renewable energy, rain harvesting tanks, as well as improved functional sections for staff and patients, new maternity and pediatric wards, a pharmacy, dental and doctors’ stations and restrooms for the public.

David Latchman, health planner in the Ministry of Health Wellness and the Environment and project manager, in a presentation outlined the various changes and upgrades that will be made to the existing facilities, which will be done at a cost of $1.6 million.

The Chateaubelair smart hospital is the second to be established in SVG, with the Georgetown smart hospital, which has been the flagship pilot project for the smart hospital initiative in Latin America and the Caribbean, having been completed in 2013.(AC)