Health Minister Vili Beros on Friday toured the Children's Hospital in Zagreb's Klaiceva Street, where three hospital wings, damaged in two earthquakes in 2020, are being reconstructed, underlining that despite the reconstruction work, the hospital continued to provide medical services.

The reconstruction of the three hospital wings, worth 43 million kuna (€5.7 million), is being financed chiefly with grants from the European Solidarity Fund. The deadline for absorbing the money and completing the project is June 2023.

The hospital’s director, Goran Roic, said it is renovating an integrated emergency room with its funds. He and Minister Beros inspected work on the first stage of that project, which has been completed. The second stage is expected to start after the New Year.

“The reconstruction process is being conducted in stages so that no medical service is cancelled and no emergency patient is left without medical care,” Roic said.

Minister Beros previously toured other Zagreb hospitals being reconstructed after they sustained damage in the 2020 earthquakes – the KB Merkur hospital and the “Fran Mihaljevic” Infectious Diseases Hospital.

He said that the Children’s Hospital had implemented as many as three reconstruction projects of a total of 52 in the health system, commending the hospital’s continuing to provide medical services despite the reconstruction process.

In the foreseeable future, the hospital is expected to move to a new address, becoming a national children’s hospital to be built in Zagreb’s neighbourhood of Blato, with the minister saying he expected “further progress in the implementation of that project” next year.