NEW HOSPITAL IN CHENNAI: 90% COMPLETE

Civil work to turn the erstwhile assembly cum secretariat complex on Omandurar Estate into a multi-specialty hospital is nearing completion.Officials of the Public Works Department (PWD), which is implementing the project, said that over 90 per cent of the work to convert the third to sixth floors into general and special wards and other civil work had been completed. The floors comprising the wards will be air-conditioned, they said.About 80 per cent of the project to convert rooms into 14 operation theatres has been finished so far. The circle above the public plaza facing Wallajah Road, which had offices of the home and public departments, is being modified to hold operation theatres.

“We are also constructing ramps on both sides of the building to take patients to all six floors. The ramps have reached the fourth floor now,” said a PWD official.Nearly 400 workers are engaged in building aluminium partitions or walls between long hallways to convert them into wards, doctors’ rooms and operation theatres. The assembly hall, council and cabinet halls will be used to hold medical conferences.The entire project has been taken up at a cost of Rs. 26.29 crore. It will function as a 500-bed referral hospital with nine departments such as neurosurgery and medical oncology, according to health department sources.The Tamil Nadu Medical Services Corporation has already placed orders for most of the equipment necessary to start the hospital, sources said. Once the equipment is installed, the building will be handed over to the health and family welfare department, officials of the PWD said.(With inputs from Serena Josephine M.)