?The Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) is to be giv­en con­tracts to man­age six ad­di­tion­al Gov­ern­ment con­struc­tion projects.

This in­cludes a new San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, off the Solomon Ho­choy High­way, a new Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, at the ex­ist­ing lo­ca­tion, and to re-or­gan­ise and con­vert the ex­ist­ing Er­ic Williams Med­ical Cen­tre, which in­cludes the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Hos­pi­tal and the Mt Hope Women's Hos­pi­tal. Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning said so while de­liv­er­ing a min­is­te­r­i­al state­ment in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day on plans to im­prove health care de­liv­ery. It was made a few hours af­ter chair­man of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to Ude­cott and the con­struc­tion sec­tor, Prof John Uff, de­liv­ered his re­port to Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards. Man­ning said the Hos­pi­tal Strat­e­gy for De­liv­er­ing Med­ical Ser­vices and Qual­i­ty Health Care was ap­proved by Cab­i­net on March 4. He said it came out of a six-year "Col­lab­o­ra­tion and Ser­vices Agree­ment" be­tween Johns Hop­kins Med­i­cine In­ter­na­tion­al and the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT).

Man­ning said HDR Ar­chi­tec­ture Inc, the leader in its field in the Unit­ed States, was cho­sen, through com­pet­i­tive pro­cure­ment, to:

�2 Con­duct a na­tion­al mar­ket analy­sis as the ba­sis for a com­pre­hen­sive ser­vice de­liv­ery mod­el;

�2 cre­ate a cam­pus mas­ter plan for the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal;

�2 cre­ate a pro­gramme plan for the new hos­pi­tal build­ings for the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal; and,

�2 com­plete a fea­si­bil­i­ty study for a new hos­pi­tal for Cen­tral Trinidad.

Man­ning said HDR rec­om­mend­ed that there was need for 2,224 beds in the health care sys­tem, which rep­re­sents an in­crease of 423 beds.

Man­ning said four new gen­er­al hos­pi­tals are to be es­tab­lished. They are:

�2 Port-of-Spain, to be re­built on its present lo­ca­tion�658 beds;

�2 two new hos­pi­tals, to be es­tab­lished from the re­or­gan­i­sa­tion and con­ver­sion of the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ence Com­plex to one hos­pi­tal with 509 beds and a women's hos­pi­tal with 131 beds; and,

�2 a new San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, with 704 beds, to be con­struct­ed on the north-east­ern side of San Fer­nan­do, along the Solomon Ho­choy High­way.

Man­ning said: "This new hos­pi­tal (San Fer­nan­do) was a con­clu­sion of the fea­si­bil­i­ty study un­der­tak­en by HDR with re­spect to a new hos­pi­tal for Cen­tral Trinidad, giv­en that the tech­ni­cal analy­sis did not sup­port a hos­pi­tal ex­clu­sive­ly for Cen­tral Trinidad."

Man­ning said sub­se­quent to the con­struc­tion of the new San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, the newest por­tion of the ex­ist­ing hos­pi­tal would be con­vert­ed to the San Fer­nan­do Hos­pi­tal with 100 beds .

Man­ning told leg­is­la­tors the Gov­ern­ment was "mov­ing speed­i­ly to im­ple­ment the hos­pi­tal strat­e­gy."

He said an im­me­di­ate ac­tion plan re­quired the ex­pan­sion of the man­date of HDR to in­clude:

�2 The prepa­ra­tion of back­ground in­for­ma­tion to be used for bid­ding doc­u­ments to in­form the is­suance of Re­quests for In­for­ma­tion and Re­quests for Pro­pos­als for de­sign-build-equip con­tracts with re­spect to new hos­pi­tals in San Fer­nan­do, Port-of-Spain and Point Fortin.