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The location of the new Civic campus of the Ottawa Hospital is a critical decision that will impact health care delivery in Ottawa for years, if not generations. The new Civic Hospital needs to be built on the Central Experimental Farm.

That a new hospital is needed is indisputable. The current buildings fly in the face of good modern hospital construction and the best medical care. The Civic buildings are a mix of old and very old (built in 1924). The oldest areas of the hospital treat patients three or four to a room, with a shared bathroom. These shared rooms lead to the easy spread of infection. Newly constructed hospitals have single rooms. We cannot continue to have patients exposed to unnecessary and high-risk infections because they are treated in rooms with poor hygienic facilities. New types of infections are developing almost each year.

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Equally urgent are the needs of patients from the University of Ottawa Heart Institute. The Heart Institute is currently undergoing modernization and major construction on its present site. The institute’s present facilities are inadequate to meet Ottawa’s needs. These new facilities are needed now. But the institute’s work is not done in isolation. Patients treated there also need access to other medical and surgical specialists and diagnostic services located at the adjacent Civic. Heart Institute patients are often very sick and can develop complications unrelated to their heart or vascular systems. Kidney or liver failure can be a complication to extensive heart surgery. Unrelated illnesses such as acute appendicitis or other abdominal problems could occur while the patients are recovering from their cardiac illness.