THE NEW INTERNATIONAL HOSPITAL OF KAMPALA, UGANDA
Client: Progetto CMR S.r.l.
Design Architect: Progetto CMR S.r.l.
Location: Kampala, Uganda
Year: 2016, ongoing project
Settore: HEALTHCARE
Services: Structural Engineering.
President Yoweri Museveni has launched works on a $250m (sh890b) International Specialized Hospital to be located in Lubowa, on the fringes of Kampala city.
The facility will ensure that Ugandans will no longer have to travel abroad for organ transplant or brain, heart surgery and cancer treatment.
The new hospital will be built on 30 acres of land and will initially operate as a 264-bed facility, with ultra-modern health facilities, health officials disclosed.
The complex is situated on an area of about 300,000 square meters in Lubowa, near Kampala and will consist of nine buildings, which, besides a hospital with 250 beds for convalescence and more than 100 beds reserved for day hospital activities, includes support facilities such as residences for doctors and nurses, a training school, a conference center, hotels and commercial areas. The distinguishing architectural solutions of the project are: the buildings, which have been designed and positioned following the natural curves of the ground in spite of height limitations, minimizing the impact on nature and allowing those who use the center to always have the best view from any perspective. SCE Project has been involved in the concept, developed and technical structural design of the International Hospital of Kampala in Uganda.
Sustainability and innovation have constantly been the pillars of ISHU, a top-level medical centre that will cover a very wide range of medical specialties, including also treatments for tumorous, cardiological and neurological diseases, telemedicine and, for the first time in Africa, nuclear medicine.
The hospital, which will develop on an area of about 300.000 sqm, will consist in nine buildings that include the hospital with 250 beds for hospitalization and more than 100 for day hospital activities, support facilities such as homes for doctors and nurses, a training school, a congress centre, hotels and commercial areas.
The will, shared with the Client, that constantly guided the design team, was to create a high-level medical centre, excelling not only for high standards of innovation and research, but also and mostly for a great care for patients: a place for treatments, with a human side, designed for the patients.
Construction of the facility will take 24 months. Thereafter, a team of Italian specialists will run the health facility for 10 years and hand it over to the government of Uganda. Finasi is to start training Ugandan nurses and doctors, as construction starts, according to Dr Diana Atwine, the health ministry’s permanent secretary. Museveni tasked the Attorney General and relevant government departments to finalise the law regulating organ transplant operations, which will be handled by the hospital. After it emerged that some people were claiming the land, the President warned that land grabbers who frustrate government programmes will be dealt with using more stringent legal provisions. “This land was a coffee plantation owned by Mitchel Cotts. Government bought it from them and we have the title. Nobody can come here and successfully claim it,” he stated. The president disclosed that he had identified another team of investors to set up a similar project to cater for specialised dental treatment. The Papal Nuncio, Michael Bloom and Italy’s ambassador to Uganda, Domenico Fornara attended the launch alongside a delegation of Ugandan ministers and heads of health facilities.
