Czech prime minister Andrej Babiš announced yesterday that construction plans at the Královské Vinohrady hospital in Prague 2 will offer 770 beds and cost a total of CZK 7bn. His health minister Adam Vojtěch called it a high project that the state was seeking funds for in order to support it. There appears to be confusion, however, over what exactly the project is. Babiš called it a trauma center, but mayor Zdeněk Hříb said it was more accurate to describe it as a reconstruction of the hospital. He said that Prague has several trauma centers, with the one in Prague 2 the largest of them. “The Ministry of Health has been promising this project to Prague for ten years and it’s now in the phase of the construction permit,” he said. The Vinohrady hospital is poorly laid out, spread between numerous buildings, and maintenance costs run to CZK 35m annually. Patients transported by helicopter to its trauma center can’t even be wheeled straight to the operating rooms upon landing. Instead, they have to be loaded into an ambulance and driven to the appropriate pavilion.
