Military Hospital in Presov Will Primarily Serve Civilian Population

Presov, September 3 (TASR) - The military hospital in Presov will primarily serve the civilian population and it will have new wards and workplaces and will have its own laboratories, TASR learnt on Tuesday. Prime Minister Robert Fico (Smer-SD), Defence Minister Robert Kalinak (Smer-SD) and Health Minister Zuzana Dolinkova (Voice-SD) discussed the construction of the new hospital with the management of J.A. Reiman Faculty Hospital in Presov. "The government approved the intention to transfer this teaching hospital to the Defence Ministry, which allows it, since we've negotiated it, to use €550 million in the next three years for the construction of a completely new teaching hospital here in Presov, which of course will already be a military hospital. In order to dispel any doubts, I'd like to point out that we have a military hospital in Ruzomberok [Zilina region], but 98-99 percent of it is dedicated to civilian patients, so this is a hospital for the public. It's a military hospital only because it'll be built from the resources of the Defence Ministry and in times of war crisis it would naturally serve the needs of the Slovak army," said the premier. "Maybe we need to dispel such, as it were, fears of the population that this will be a hospital that will provide medical care only for soldiers. No, it'll be standard health care that has been provided here before," said Dolinkova, adding that the hospital's current buildings will be renovated with funding under the recovery and resilience plan. "We want that three years from now the inhabitants of Presov region, as well as the wider surroundings, will be able to welcome the most modern hospital in their area of the city of Presov. I believe that we'll be able to meet all the deadlines, we're going really fast. Problems are always only technical and such things that normally occur during construction," added Kalinak. am/mcs