A NUMBER of new hospitals within the Hamad Bin Khalifa Medical City under construction in Qatar are expected to be completed and fully equipped by the middle of this year, the country’s Public Works Authority Ashghal said.

The new QR2.4-billion ($659 million) medical complex will feature a women’s hospital, ambulatory and minimally invasive surgical hospital and a physical medicine and rehabilitation hospital, as well as a centre for medical research and a bio-bank.

Led by Korea-based Hyundai Engineering and Construction Company, the project was due to be completed by the end of last year, according to Ashghal, but has suffered delays.

The project also includes construction of additional operating rooms for Hamad Medical Corp (HMC), which would increase capacity of the existing Hamad General Hospital’s surgical department.

The dedicated building is located on a site between the women’s hospital and the general hospital’s emergency department and its facilities would include 20 new operating theatres.

Ashghal said construction on the 227,000-sq-m site in Rumaila was now more than 80 per cent complete since work started in February 2011.

The new 243-bed women’s hospital is expected to include seven operating theatres with four rooms for Caesarean procedures, and three rooms specialising in gynaecology obstetrics. There will be 21 delivery rooms and an outpatient clinic, which will house 60 examination rooms.

 Facilities at the new ambulatory and minimally invasive surgical hospital, with 14 operating theatres, will include 130 short-stay beds, a suite for radiology, examination, and treatment rooms.

The physical medicine and rehabilitation hospital will have an advanced adult hydrotherapy suite and outpatient clinics for occupational therapy, organ transplantation and physiotherapy.

The emergency department is set for expansion, with the addition of two new units with plans to turn the section into the world’s largest ER (emergency room).

Meanwhile, Ashghal has pushed back its deadline to open the Translational Research Institute within the new Hamad Bin Khalifa Medical City. The project is now expected to be completed by the end of 2017, instead of this year.

The institute will be an HMC facility for clinical research in the fields of cancer, trauma, infectious diseases, neuroscience, diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and women’s and children’s health.

A new HMC communicable diseases hospital is also under construction and is set to open this year.