The Children’s Hospital for Wales
The Children’s Hospital for Wales received its first young patients Friday 25 February. For the first time, Wales now has a purpose designed and built state-of-the-art hospital to look after the healthcare of babies, children and young people.
The new hospital opened its doors after years of planning, preparation and fund-raising and the first patients were transferred to the bright and colourful new wards from the existing children’s department at the adjoining University Hospital of Wales.
Part of the Cardiff and Vale NHS Trust and located at the University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff; the new Children’s Hospital is a phased project which will provide specialist paediatric care for patients from the whole of South Wales and beyond. Each year, the Trust deals with 36,000 children’s visits or admissions and nearly half of them come from outside the Cardiff and Vale area.
“This is an important day for Children’s health services in Wales”, said Sue Morgan, Directorate Manager for Child Health. “We now have the first phase of a dedicated children’s hospital of which we can all be extremely proud. We must now work together to achieve the next phases which will complement the excellent facilities opened today.”
The first phase includes two 25 bed medical wards and one 16 bed paediatric cancer ward. There are treatment rooms; an oncology outpatients unit; play and education rooms and parent’s accommodation. It is hoped work can start soon on the second phase of the hospital, which will reprovide a paediatric Intensive Care Unit; operating theatres and surgical wards.
