Take a look at the "healing factory" in Zemun: We never had a hospital like this, built for disaster

Photo: Mateja Beljan

The white, painted and worn out infusion stand is a simple object that is normally seen in hospitals and no one wants to be the one lying next to it. While journalists looked at the beds and rooms in the new Covid hospital in Zemun (Belgrade), we went to the other side of a long corridor. An entire room was filled with these stands. But with new, shiny, impeccably clean ones, so stacked up that it was impossible to count them.

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We are not yet aware of the fact that each of these will soon be next to someone's bed, that there will be a bag they see as soon as they open their eyes, from which medicine will drip in drop by drop, seconds will pass like minutes, and every drop will bring a fraction of hope for recovery.

In our eyes, this is "only" a factory item, something that was procured in bulk and with which this hospital is equipped.

When the new Covid center opens, many will be coming out of it, happy that they no longer have to look at the white walls, white coats and instruments that shine in a sterile clean environment. Unfortunately, some may fall asleep here forever.

We haven't had a hospital like this before. It is a quick response to the shock that befell us in March. Usually, hospitals are located in the center of a city, their architecture is taken into account, they have many operating rooms and offices. Many are already old, they have countless unnecessary partitions, repurposed spaces. Even during a pandemic, patients are accommodated wherever possible, so unbelievably, those with pneumonia lie in beds surrounded by hazmat suits even in wards for occupational medicine.

But this hospital is simple in appearance, yet huge even in the middle of an industrial zone. It's a factory of treatment - efficient, modern, clean, spacious and with uniform rooms.

There are no small, narrow rooms, labyrinths, everything is accessible and simple. The rooms make up entire small halls with lined up standard beds in which patients will replace one another in the coming months, as if on a conveyor belt, as if in a factory.

There are no grafted cables with oxygen, no space for pressurized bottles - oxygen installations are inside the walls, above each bed there is a "socket" for "O2" and air, and gas pressure can be read in the hallway.

Tailored to measure a disease that is mowing down people - this hospital's goal is to put as many as possible in beds with always available oxygen and enough space around the bed so that at any time a patient can be surround by enough doctors and nurses who can proceed with what is only done in an extremely difficult situation - intubation.

This hospital looks like a mix of mass accommodation in temporary hospitals and the conditions that exist in modern clinical centers. In fact, what looks different is the uniformity and mass, no hospital is built in such a way, for disasters like this, when it is necessary to treat a huge number of people. This is something that has probably never been thought about in Serbia, even during wars.

The work on this facility is nearing completion, but, while some the rooms are completely equipped, works are still ongoing on the other wing of the building. Everything is done in parallel, because the deadline for opening is approaching - it's as soon as next week. That these buildings will not look exactly like impersonal factory halls is also seen in the fact that care was taken to arrange the entrance - a carpet of grass has already been planted there.

The building was recently connected to the water supply and the sewage system, and the Batajnica road is still closed in that part. On the dark, long road leading to Batajnica, this hospital cannot be "missed" and it is certain that in the future, when we get rid of coronavirus, it will represent a significant support for our healthcare.

The announced expansion of Batajnica road to the level of a boulevard only shows how important the industrial zone Gornji (Upper) Zemun will be in the city, whose expansion is unstoppable.

Although it is not close to the city center, the Covid hospital can be easily accessed from the highway, because it is only a few kilometers away from it, from the point where the new Novi Sad road, the highway to Novi Sad and the Belgrade bypass fork.

(Telegraf.rs)