The loan will enable the hospital to bring together activities currently dispersed between several locations, create new departments and install the latest medical technology to provide acute and specialist hospital care and teaching and research facilities all at one site. As well as benefiting patients, EIB President Philippe Maystadt said the new hub “will act as a magnet site for third parties and satellite projects in innovative sectors.”
The first €40 million phase of the loan agreed in Leuven earlier this month will go towards the construction of a new 32,000-square-metre intensive care and critical services department, extending the number of the hospital's operating theatres and dialysis facilities.
A new psychiatry centre with specialised diagnosis and treatment facilities is also in the pipeline, as are a child psychology department and a school for hospitalised children. The existing cancer department will be expanded, as will the maternity and paediatric departments. The addition of new laboratories, a teaching auditorium and a nursery for staff will complete an extensive renovation of the existing research facilities.
The Pellenberg campus will be transformed to provide medium- and longterm rehabilitation while the university hospital campuses around the old town will offer residential care once their current activities have been re-housed in Gasthuisberg.
There are also plans to renovate the outpatient department, mortuary and hospital transportation tunnels. Work has already started to provide underground parking for up to 1,500 vehicles.
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