KK cardiac centre needs RM60m more to be built

Star: KOTA KINABALU: The Health Ministry is seeking an additional RM60mil for an urgently-required cardiac centre to be built here – the country’s fifth.
Health Minister Datuk Liow Tiong Lai said the Government had initially approved some RM80mil for the cardiac centre but the project cost had since jumped to RM140mil as the ministry had increased the scope of the works.
“The cost of the building itself is not that much but the bulk of the expenditure is for the specialised equipment needed there,” he told reporters after visiting the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) here yesterday.
He said the 100-bed cardiac centre would be a unit within QEH and would be the latest in the country after similar facilities built in Kuala Lumpur, Penang, Johor Baru and Kuching.
Liow said the centre was urgently needed as some 100 heart patients from Sabah were being sent to the National Heart Institute (IJN) every year for surgery.
In addition, there were about 174 open heart surgeries carried out in the state by IJN surgeons annually.
Meanwhile, Liow said that after personally seeing the overcrowding in some wards in QEH he had directed his ministry’s officers to speed up the construction of two more blocks of wards at the hospital.
He said the “twin towers” were due to be completed by 2010 and would increase the hospital’s capacity by 660 beds.
“The additional wards are very much needed. Some wards are so overcrowded that there are even beds along the corridors,” Liow said.
He said he had also approved an additional RM8mil for the hospital to acquire various equipment.