AUBMC inaugurates new medical center

The first stage of the hospital’s 2020 Vision

The American University of Beirut Medical Center will inaugurate a new clinical building, named the Wassef and Souad Sawwaf building, on January 20, as part of a larger expansion. Another medical administrative building will be completed in June 2014. A third one, the Academic and Clinical Center (ACC), also under construction, will be completed in 2015.

Adnan Tahir, Medical Center Director and Chief Medical Officer, said: “We are obliged to invest in new buildings because medical services have evolved with time and facilities should be modified accordingly.” He said that hospitals are no longer just medical and surgical rooms, they are specialized in treating most diseases.

The Sawwaf building consists of five floors, it includes a clinic to serve students and university staff, and family medicine patients, and will be equipped with a PET-CT scan and cyclotron.
The next building to be completed in a few months will consist of ten floors housing all of the old administration offices, medical records and other administrative and operational functions.

These new projects are part of AUBMC’s ‘Vision for 2020’, which aims to eventually increase the number of beds from 350 to 600. The ACC includes a dedicated facility for cancer patients, a one-day surgery center, an eye and ear center, etc.

Investments allocated to the whole expansion plan will reach $500 million financed by donors and bank loans. The expansion is expected to create between 500 and 700 job opportunities including physicians’.