Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity announces a £15 m donation from Aditya and Megha Mittal and the family, towards a new £321 m children’s medical centre, to be named the Mittal Children’s Medical Centre.
This ambitious project is the crucial next stage of redevelopment of Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children. It will offer facilities for a wide range of conditions, including the following three specialities where we are the largest centre in the UK:
- children with heart and lung conditions
- children requiring neurosurgery
- children with renal problems
This is the largest single donation to the hospital.
Aditya and Megha Mittal said today,
“We believe that the Great Ormond Street Hospital does outstanding work in the field of children’s health. Through this contribution, we hope that more children will be able to access appropriate medical care.”
Great Ormond Street Hospital Chief Executive Dr Jane Collins warmly welcomed the donation. She said today,
“The Mittal Children’s Medical Centre will provide the facilities our children and their families deserve, and where our expert staff can deliver the sort of care they passionately want to do. We face increasing demand for our services but we also need to offer care in a less stressful way.
This support really is tremendous news. With such a mountain to climb in terms of the finance, this investment from the Mittal family is very heartening, and gives us confidence to go forward.”
Contacts: Stephen Cox, Great Ormond Street Hospital, 020 7239 3126
Nicola Davidson, Arcelormittal plc, 020 7543 1172
The Mittal Children’s Medical Centre: why world class facilities are needed
Great Ormond Street is a world class and pioneering hospital. Its facilities however are far from world class. Some wards are housed in the Southwood Building (opened 1938, thought to be the oldest clinical building in London.) The nearby Cardiac Wing has aged badly and its standards were quickly superseded in subsequent decades. Facilities are cramped, crowded and inefficient, families cannot stay conveniently near their children, modern standards of privacy and dignity are not met, and the ward cubicles are just not designed for today’s modern medicine, in particular the amount of equipment.
A £321 m redevelopment is underway creating the Mittal Children’s Medical Centre. This will comprise one wholly new building, the Morgan Stanley Clinical Building, (to open end 2011) and the gutting and rebuilding of the current Cardiac Wing to create, in effect, a second new building (open 2014/15). The two buildings are carefully linked to maximise efficient clinical use of space.
When complete the Centre will ensure that every child staying over night does so in modern standards of comfort and care. The Centre will aspire to set new standards for child friendly and family friendly design. The Centre will give the hospital the capacity to treat 20% more patients, to meet expected demand in the years ahead. It will help us in the drive to reduce unnecessary hospital admissions by treating more patients in less intensive settings.
The Centre will include facilities for our world class heart and lung, neuroscience and renal services, as well as a variety of other vital services.
At Great Ormond Street Hospital, clinical care, developing new treatments and training staff for the future go closely together. The new centre is designed with this in mind.
Funding for the redevelopment
Funding for the centre: the government has provided a special £75m grant, and the Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity had around £76 m saved carefully from years of fundraising to this end. Therefore, in October 2007 we announced that we had £170 m still to raise.
The donation by the Mittal family is seen as highly significant in helping us with our major fundraising task.
Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Trust
Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Trust is the country’s leading centre for treating sick children, with the widest range of specialists under one roof. With the UCL Institute of Child Health, we are the largest centre for paediatric research outside the US and play a key role in training children’s health specialists for the future.
Largest centre for children with cardiac or renal problems, or with HIV or haemophilia.
Largest centre for children needing brain or craniofacial surgery.
With UCLH, the largest centre for children with leukaemia and cancer in Europe and the third largest in the Western world. (We take the under 12s)
Contact information:
GOSH-ICH Press Office: 020 7239 3125
Email: Coxs@gosh.nhs.uk
For genuine and urgent out of hours call speak to switchboard on 020 7405 9200
