Several companies based in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia announced on Tuesday that they will invest in the construction of the new Magdi Yacoub Heart Center, which is located in 6th of October City, about 20 miles outside of Cairo.
The Gulf-based companies include Dubai’s Roads and Transportation Authority and Global Education Management Systems, or GEMS Education, along with Saudi Arabia’s Al-Ansari Group for transportation and roads.
Meanwhile, an initiative known for supporting businesses dedicated to charity as well as honoring their founders across the Arab world has also allocated a quarter of the revenues from its annual ceremony to the new center, which is currently under construction.
Authorities announced last month that construction work would begin in February on the hospital, with costs totaling $US 160 million and the center set to be finished in about two years.
The five-floor hospital is set to house five operating theaters, five rooms for cardiac catheterization procedures, and around 405 beds for patients.
The eagerly awaited new heart center 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 the Magdi Yacoub Heart Foundation in Upper Egypt’s Aswan, which opened in 2008.
Officials have said that heart surgeries performed on children will constitute 60 percent of the operations at the hospital.
It was previously announced that the new center would be able to a house five times more patients than the Magdi Yacoub Heart Foundation in Aswan, with thousands to be offered medical services annually.
Furthermore, the center is expected to dedicate a portion of their efforts to conducting medical research, and officials have said previously that the center’s researchers will be equipped with the latest technologies in the field.
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 Magdi Yacoub Heart Foundation in Aswan, with the number of patients there having doubled in recent years.
Yacoub previously told Youm7 that he, along with his team, are currently working to provide the greatest care for heart patients through Aswan’s center, adding that they will continue to provide high-quality care at the new hospital near Cairo as well.
Yacoub’s medical projects have contributed charitably in several regions, including Egypt’s Cairo and Aswan, Kigali in Rwanda, and Jamaica.
The 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.
