Health Minister Vili Beros on Monday visited the Varazdin General Hospital and its 74 million kuna (€10m) new building housing outpatient and central emergency departments, "which is to be opened soon and if necessary, also take in Covid patients," state agency Hina said.

The outpatient department, worth 51 million kuna (€7m), will provide services of internal medicine, surgery, urology, otorhinolaryngology, ophthalmology and general surgery while the emergency medicine department is worth 23 million kuna (€3m). Both projects were co-financed with EU money.

The minister noted that the project was one of the new infrastructure health system projects.

“Unfortunately… last year’s earthquakes have revealed all the shortcomings of the healthcare infrastructure. All the hospitals were old, we know the extent of the damage in Sisak and Zagreb, and that underlines the need for projects like these,” he said, adding that a national hospital for children’s diseases, a national teaching hospital and the revitalization of the Institute of Immunology were in the government’s plans.

A central operating block, worth more than 400 million kuna (€53m), will be built as part of the Varazdin General Hospital as well, as provided for under the development agreement for the north of Croatia signed earlier today.

(€1 = 7.52 kuna)