THE NEW UNIVERSITY COL- lege Hospital building looks set to open on schedule in April 2005, and all the services currently offered by the Middlesex Hospital will move there - presumably with its medics.
The UCLH NHS Trust website is predictably gushing about the new building, proffering statistics galore: 97 metres high, 100 kilometres of ductwork, 2400 PCs, 3000 ‘vision panels’...but one figure is left out. The width between beds is just 2.7 metres, according to Private Eye on Novem- ber 26 — less than the minimum de- manded by new rules to combat the MRSA bug.
Why build a new hospital anyway?According to the website, “We do a large amount of this work in con-ditions at The Middlesex and Univer- sity College Hospitals, which are rap- idly becoming unsuitable for 21st cen- tury healthcare”. Presumably expos- ing patients — and UCL medical stu- dents — to an illegally high risk of infection is suitable, then.
Medical students and sites’ of- ficer Vishali Thakrar was unavailable for comment at the time of going to press.