Rui Lourenço, president of the ARS, the Regional Health Administration, told the Algarve Observer that building work had been completed last year and that all that was needed was the benches and the necessary technical equipment, but everything indicated that it would start operating in March or early April.

The new building is situated next to the site where, if everything runs according to plan, the new Algarve Central Hospital should start being built in 2009, with a scheduled completion date of 2012.

However, it is still unknown when the new hospital will actually begin to operate in practice, given that, as is recognised by specialists in the sector, the setting up of a hospital can take several years.

The laboratory will replace the existing ARS/Algarve unit on the institution's premises in Faro and will be used for analyses of drinking and bathing water, analyses of foodstuffs, biotoxin research, microbacteriological identification and surveillance of the appearance of cyanobacteria.

Tests to identify cases of tuberculosis, hepatitis and AIDS, for examples, will be other aspects of the work of the future laboratory; the contract for building the facility was awarded in 2005 by the then Minister of Health, Luís Filipe Pereira.

The new centre will be given the name of Dr.ª Laura Aires, in a tribute to a major figure in the fight against the spread of AIDS in Portugal in the 1980s, Rui Lourenço said.

Work began in June 2005 and it represents an investment of 1.8 million euros; the building will also be used as the headquarters of the new Regional Public Health Centre.

16 people will work in the new laboratory, a small number that is justified by Rui Lourenço by technological advances and automated processes, which mean that a laboratory such as this can operate with a smaller staff; it will work 24 hours a day.

The laboratory will be the first of a series of facilities planned for the Parque das Cidades, in particular the technology centre which will be the responsibility of CRIA (the Algarve Regional Centre for Innovation) where between three and four hundred people will work.

On the same site, the construction of a congress centre is planned with a multi-purpose pavilion for 1,800 people, which was presented less than a year ago, as well as a hotel with 200 beds.

The future hospital – which together with the conversion of the current building into a continuing care unit represents an investment of 250 million euros – will have 549 beds, plus 15 for palliative care, and will be equipped with ten operating theatres, 46 offices for outpatient consultations and 43 day hospital places.

The new areas of specialism include Angiology and Vascular Surgery, Pediatric Surgery, Endocrinology and Nutrition, Medical Genetics, Neuroradiology and Radiotherapy, none of which exists at the Faro Hospital.

source: algarve observer