Cutting-edge oncology hospital will appear on the Bulgarian healthcare market. It will engulf 60 million levs. The project is a joint venture between the City Clinic of Sofia and the University Centre for the treatment of cancer MD Anderson in Houston (USA). The new oncology will work with the Health Insurance Fund and is scheduled to welcome its first patients at the end of next year.
„Our center in Houston is № 1 in the world because we apply a multidisciplinary approach to the disease – we do not act alone, but all the specialists in the different fields combine their efforts against the disease. We’ll help build a world-class centre in Sofia, we will share medical approaches and medical protocols to be most useful for our Bulgarian counterparts. I understand that a third of cancer cases in Bulgaria are now treated abroad. We will keep them in their own country, because we will offer high-class treatment,“ said Vice President of the U.S. clinic professor Eduardo Diaz.
Now the most preferred treatment destination for Bulgarian cancer patients is Turkey, where prices are several times higher, but the quality is guaranteed.
In turn, the medical director of City Clinic, Prof. Ivo Petrov pointed out that in the last 10 years Bulgaria has come forward in the treatment of cardiovascular diseases through the application of modern therapy, advanced technology and international prominence, but is this was not the case with oncological diseases. „In our country there is a huge deficit in the entire chain of oncological treatment – from early detection, the precise diagnosis and adequate therapy. Discovered in time, cancer is completely curable. Our ambitions are to bring back to Sofia many Bulgarian specialists who make successful careers in popular western oncology clinics“ Mr. Petrov said.
The centre for complex treatment of cancer will have 140 beds and its level of equipment, devices and methods of treatment will be the best in the region. It will employ more than 300 elite specialists trained abroad, mostly in the university centre MD Anderson. The oncology of the City Clinic will be built at the Sofia ring road next to the eponymous cardiovascular hospital. It will offer the widest range of medical services – radiotherapy, nuclear medicine, bone marrow transplantation, a full range of surgical oncology, genetic counseling, and other services. The designer is the leading American architectural office HKS, specializing in the creation of hospitals around the world.
„All therapies will be accessible to the people“, said Ilian Grigorov – a co-founder and director of City Clinic. If this will be the case, however, largely depends on the stabilization of the budget of national health insurer NHIF.
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