Construction work at the new Magdi Yacoub Heart Center in Cairo, located in 6 October beside Zewail City, is set to begin in February, with costs totaling US$160 million and construction set to take nearly two years.
The five-floor center, which will be built on 35.67 acres, is set to house five operating theaters, five rooms for cardiac catheterization procedures, and around 405 beds for patients.
The eagerly awaited facility aims to perform 12,000 annual surgeries, including around 3,000 open heart surgeries. Additionally, the center has vowed to conduct 9,000 annual cardiac catheterization procedures, double the number of those performed in Aswan’s heart center.
Officials at the center emphasized that heart surgeries performed on children will constitute 60 percent of the operations at the hospital.
It was previously announced that the new Cairo center would be able to a house a five times more patients than the Magdi Yacoub Heart Foundation in Aswan, with thousands to be offered medical services there annually.
Furthermore, the center is expected to dedicate a portion of their efforts to conducting medical research and announced that its researchers will be equipped with the latest technologies in the field, with scientific research representing a cornerstone of any developed nation.
Meanwhile, official sources from the up and coming center have said that the decision to establish a new cardiac care facility in Cairo is part of efforts to lighten pressure on the heart center in Aswan founded in 2008, with the number of patients there having doubled in recent years.
‘Egyptian hearts need good care,” Yacoub formerly told Youm7, stressing that he, along with his team, are currently working to provide the greatest care for heart patients through Aswan’s center, as well as the much-anticipated new center in Cairo.
Yacoub’s medical projects have contributed charitably in several regions, including Egypt’s Cairo and Aswan, Kigali in Rwanda, and Jamaica.
The famed Egyptian-British surgeon is also the founder and director of research at the Harefield Heart Science Center, and is currently a professor of Cardiothoracic surgery at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London.
Image: Magdi Yacoub Heart Foundation
