Two major Istanbul hospitals to move during reconstruction

Gülseven Özkan - ISTANBUL

Two significant research and education hospitals in Istanbul will soon move to temporary locations, as their existing buildings will be reconstructed in an effort to make them earthquake resistant.  

The Cerrahpaşa and Çapa medicine faculty buildings will be rebuilt in their current locations in Istanbul’s Fatih district, according to Istanbul University Medicine Faculty Dean Professor Bahaüddin Çolakoğlu.

“Our faculties will be demolished and rebuilt... We hope that the construction of the new buildings will start as of 2017. We are still looking for new spaces and the locations are not certain yet,” said Çolakoğlu.

Çapa Medicine Faculty may be moved to a building which is still under construction in the Sultangazi neighborhood, while Cerrahpaşa Medicine Faculty will be moved to prefabricated buildings, which will be constructed for 40 million Turkish Liras. 

However, Çolakoğlu said a new building with a 600-bed capacity is one option for the faculty’s temporary home. “We have demanded the Health Ministry provide us a temporary high-capacity hospital building during the construction period,” said Çolakoğlu, also recalling that the Istanbul University Medicine Faculties has a capacity of 1,500 beds.  

Cerrahpaşa Medicine Faculty deputy chief physician Prof. İbrahim İkizceli said three-story prefabricated buildings will be constructed to house hospital services. Tenders for a prefabricated building which will serve for at least three years will cost around 40 million liras, he said.

The hospitals’ current buildings are not resistant to earthquakes and were damaged during the Aug. 17, 1999, earthquake. 

Turkey was shaken by a 7.5-magnitude earthquake in the early hours of Aug. 17, 1999, whose epicenter was the Gölcük district in the northwestern province of Kocaeli. One of Turkey’s deadliest natural disasters in recent history, the earthquake led to the death of around 18,000 people and injured almost 50,000 others.

The country, however, failed to take necessary actions against the earthquake, a recent report has revealed.