By 2030, the Institute of Hematology and Blood Transfusion (UGCT) wants to invest CZK 936 million in the area near Charles Square in Prague. Petr Cetkovský, the director of ÚHKT, said today.
Today, a pavilion with a biobank and a cryo-warehouse was ceremoniously opened for the storage of samples and grafts for more than CZK 300 million. The construction of a new pavilion for scientific teams and the reconstruction of three existing buildings is still planned.
“Overall, at today’s prices, which I do not know how they will rise, we plan about CZK 936 million,” said Cetkovsky. One third of the amount is invested by ÚHKT, a third is obtained from a subsidy from the state budget and a third from European funds. The area in the center of Prague must also be judged by conservationists; in addition to the upper floors, the basement has ten meters cut into the rock.
In the now open Pavilion of Progressive Medicine, named after one of the previous directors of the UGCC, Jan Evangelist Dyr, there is a state-of-the-art warehouse for storing frozen grafts for transplant patients in patients with hematological diseases. Adjacent spaces allow tissue processing and the production of drugs, stem cells and so-called virus-specific lymphocytes.
At the same time, the biobank stores samples of treated patients, which can be compared abroad and examine specific diseases. There are 50,000 samples taken, the capacity for new ones is 350,000, all of which are stored automatically by two robots, which also allows searching according to specific parameters. According to Cetkovsky, this is probably the largest similar facility in Central Europe.
“I am glad that, thanks to investments, medicine is gradually moving to the level of the third millennium,” said Minister of Health Vlastimil Válek (TOP 09) at the opening of the pavilion. He acknowledged the merits of the current investments to his predecessors as ministers, including Adam Vojtech (YES). One of the “covid” ministers in the former government, Jan Blatný, who is a hematologist with medical expertise, attended the opening of the pavilion.
Hundreds of millions to billions of crowns are now being invested by several Prague hospitals. At the end of 2023, about five billion crowns from European funds will go to state hospitals and other organizations established by the Ministry of Health. 42 projects have been approved, the largest of which is the insulation of the so-called Blue Pavilion of the Prague University Hospital in Motol for 1.3 billion crowns. Bohnice Psychiatric Hospital wants to invest 490 million crowns in savings, and Thomayer Hospital 365 million.
The General University Hospital, which adjoins the UGCT and leases a building in Kateřinská Street, where the research teams are based, also wants to build. In total, it has planned investments, which in 2020 it was estimated at eight billion crowns. It plans two new blocks in the main area near Charles Square, the first for 1.5 billion crowns to replace the current building of the Department of Otorhinolaryngology (ORL), and the second for two billion to grow in its vicinity. The planned modernization of the Gynecology and Obstetrics Clinic in the U Apolináře maternity hospital should cost about one billion.
Source: CTK
