July 26 (BTA) - The Health Ministry has ordered the
termination of a contract for building a new children's hospital
 which would involve the completion of a complex of buildings
nextdoor to Sofia's Alexandrovska Hospital. This transpired on
Monday from a Health Ministry letter to the National Citizens'
Initiative for a Real Children's Hospital, which has been
campaigning for a restart of the project.

In the letter, Deputy Health Minister Dimiter Petrov says that
on July 5 his ministry ordered the Healthcare Investment Company
 for a Children's Hospital (HICCH) to discontinue all activities
 related to the implementation of the engineering contract and
all procedures arising from that contract in accordance with the
 Public Procurement Act related to independent construction
supervision and investor control.

The Health Ministry has also asked the HICCH to start a
procedure to terminate the contract with civil-law combination
Detsko Zdrave (Children's Health), which comprises companies of
the Glavbolgarstroy group and has won a public procurement
contract worth 93.4 million leva after VAT for the design,
construction and designer supervision of a National General
Children's Hospital. As a reason for that, the Health Ministry
cited a position expressed by the Regional Development and
Public Works Ministry, which said that it is unacceptable to
draw up a detailed site development plan to define the status of
 the unfinished structures nextdoor to Alexandrovska Hospital.

The contract with Detsko Zrave was signed in April 2020 by the
then health minister Kiril Ananiev. The buildings at
Alexandrovska Hospital which were to be completed had their
first-sod ceremony back in 1978. The project was abandoned at
the rough construction stage some 30 years ago. The idea that
Bulgaria needs a new, state-of-the-art children's hospital to
bring together the pediatric clinics and wards that are now
scattered among other hospitals resurfaced a couple of years
ago.

The original plan was to use the unfinished structures at
Alexandrovska Hospital. After tens of thousands of parents,
doctors, architects and members of the public protested that the
 long-abandoned structures were unsafe and unfit, in May 2020
prime minister Boyko Borissov announced that they will be
demolished and the children's hospital will be built on the site
 from scratch. Borissov's statement was confirmed by Health
Minister Kostadin Angelov on September 15, 2020 during public
consultation on the project. RI/VE

//