Face of Nation International : The conversion of the ExCel centre into a field hospital with 4,000 beds is perhaps the most ambitious medical project Britain has seen since the end of the second world war.
It will dwarf all other hospitals in the UK. The largest in the country, until NHS Nightingale opens next week, is St George’s in Tooting, with around 1,300 beds. Even for military planners, used to operating hospitals under fire or in extreme environments like deserts, the scale is unusual. Britain’s field hospitals, deployed to conflicts or disaster zones, operate as units of 50, 100 or 200 beds. These can be joined together, but it would take 20 of the largest units to match the capacity of the new coronavirus centre.
Yet in under two weeks, the two kilometre-long halls – usually filled with people planning their future, or marketing their products – will instead be wards, ready to receive an expected surge in coronavirus patients. The exhibition halls make an ideal space for a temporary hospital, and are relatively simple for military engineers to adapt. They have a history of rapid and flexible conversions, including commandeering a cruise ship, the SS Uganda, during the Falklands war and turning it into a hospital ship.
And if the scale of the Nightingale is unusual, at least it comes without many of the usual challenges of setting up field hospitals – providing power and sanitation under tents, in areas without electricity or running water. (Source: The Guardian News- UK)
