Hospital Kampar set to move

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HOSPITAL Kampar which is located on a hill has made visits to the hospital extra challenging for patients, especially the elderly and pregnant women.

This is because the gradient of the hill is too steep.

The hospital management too, as if acknowledging this fact, had put up a signboard on the slope cautioning motorists driving up the slope to the hospital on the gradient.

But this is set to be a thing of the past because the hospital will be relocated to Kampar new town about 4km away.

Festive goodies: Visitation panel deputy chairman R.Balaratnam (left) giving a Deepavali giftbag to a patient in the Kampar Hospital recently.

Construction of the hospital on a plot of land opposite Kampung Tanjung Rengas is scheduled to start next year.

Kampar MP Datuk Lee Chee Leong, in making the announcement, said Sultan of Perak Sultan Azlan Shah, who owned the 42.1ha land, had unconditionally granted it to the Health Ministry to build the new hospital.

He added that the ministry had also paid the premium and the quit rent for the first year.

Lee, who is Deputy Home Minister, said the new 250-bedded hospital would also come with several specialist services.

“The hospital, estimated to cost RM300mil, will take two years to complete,” he told reporters during the Tanjung Tualang health clinic open day recently.

But until the new hospital is operational, patients have to endure walking up the steep slope.

To make matters worse, the only van which ferried patients from the foothill to the hospital had broken down a year ago, said a spokesman from the hospital’s visitation panel who preferred anonymity.

He asked that the ministry provided them with a new van.

While fruit stall vendor Lin Hooi Dan, 45, said she had heard of the relocation of the hospital but felt it was too early to comment on it, another Kampar resident Mohd Zaibedee Mahmood, 34, said he hoped the new hospital would come with better facilities, consultation services and treatment for the people.

The hospital currently has visiting specialists in medicine, paediatrics, obstetrics and gynaecology, psychiatry and orthopaedics who come in on specific days.

Hospital director Dr Nailah Safian said the new hospital would be good news for everybody.