German General Hospital to open in Khalifa City next year

A new general hospital built and operated by German experts is to come up on a 40,000 square metre plot in Abu Dhabi's Khalifa City in collaboration between two local trading houses.

The German General Hospital (Middle East) will be a first-of-its-kind effort in the region, which will be fully managed and operated by qualified German medical experts, including specialist doctors and nurses. It is targeted to be fully operational in the last quarter of 2010.

The project will be jointly executed by Abdulla Abdul Jalil Al Fahim and the Al Alamia Trading FZC. It is being financed by Shedlin Capital AG Germany via a closed fund – Shedlin Middle East Health Care 1. This fund will include two components – the Al Rawdah German Medical Centre in Downtown Abu Dhabi and a 100-bed state-of-the-art hospital in Khalifa City A.

Addressing the media at a ground-breaking ceremony of the hospital project in Khalifa City A, Markus Eulig, CFO, German General Hospital, said: "For the first time in the region, qualified German healthcare run by a team of medical experts from Germany will be available to the UAE and GCC residents.

"Our aim is to develop the German General Hospital in Abu Dhabi as a centre of medical excellence for the GCC as well as the Middle East. We are confident that world-class German medical expertise is much sought after by people from the Middle East, particularly the UAE."

The hospital's design and planning has been undertaken by Woernerundpartner – a leading German architectural group specialising in hospital and healthcare projects. The project will be supported by Siemens in co-ordination with the Health Authority-Abu Dhabi.

Eulig said it is estimated that approximately 50,000 people fly across to Germany from the UAE alone every year to avail German medical care. "The German General Hospital will offer the same time-tested quality of German medical expertise here in Abu Dhabi.

"One of the USPs will be that the hospital as well as the Medical Centre will be fully managed by on-site medical experts from Germany who will offer their services by staying within the country for a minimum of two years at a stretch. The uniqueness is that we will strive to offer the same ambience and high quality medical excellence and service in Abu Dhabi itself so that patients with affinity for German medical care need not fly overseas."

The Hospital and the Medical Centre will be operated and managed by Klinikum Offenbach, a leading hospital and provider of complete health services in the Frankfurt Rhine-Main region in central Germany.

The Al Rawdah German Medical Centre, which is the first component of the project, will have four major medical disciplines under one roof initially – internal medicine, paediatrics, radiology and orthopedics, accompanied with aftercare services and physiotherapy.

Eulig said going forward the idea was to expand the presence of the German medical and healthcare brand across the UAE and the region.

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