Oduber

tients, annually. Currently,HOH has approximately 1,000 employees, 55 of which are medical specialists. Another 35 medical specialists, who are not directly employed by the hospital, provide ser- vices there, as well.  A large expansion and renovation project of the hospital started in Sep- tember 2014 and is due to finish in 2019. It is one of the largest construction projects in the history of Aruba. The project includes a new emergency depart- ment, three times the size of the current one; an expansion of the operating theaters and the post anesthesia unit; and the construction of a new hybrid Cath lab. A new, six-story building will arise adjacent to the current five-story tow- er. The 10,000 square meters of new space will house the emergency department, three hos- pitalization wards of thirty patient rooms each, and a new mother and child center that will house the delivery suites, the pediatric ward, and the maternity ward. Another three-story building is constructed for outpatient clinics. Finally, the old building will be renovated. “We are about half way through construction and we expect to open the newly-constructed THE DR. HORACIO E. ODUBER HOSPITAAL bed tower very soon,” says Drs. M. (Theo) de Kool, RA, HOH’s Chief Financial Officer. “The ren- ovation of the existing building has to be done in two parts, because it’s still in use, and each of those parts will take another year, approximate- ly.This whole project will then have taken about five years.The investment in capital expenditures for the hospital itself–equipment, furniture, and other things like that is approximately $UD40 million–that’s carried by the hospital.The infra- structure of the building is provided by the gov- ernment–that’s an investment of approximately $125-130 million.” In addition to providing medical care for Aruba’s population of 105,000, de Kool believes that the HOH also plays a pivotal role in sup- porting the island’s tourism industry, which accounts for three quarters of its economy. “Since we have about one million stay- over tourists on the island, many of whom are older, good medical care is very important,” he explains. “Several years ago, there was a survey held among tourists about factors that made them select Aruba as their destina- tion. And one of the issues was the availability of good health care.” In order to better serve its patients, both