01.10.2020.
President and Supreme Commander of Serbian Armed Forces, Aleksandar Vučić: New hospital in Batajnica will significantly increase capacities of Serbian health care system
The President and Supreme Commander of the Serbian Armed Forces, Aleksandar Vučić, accompanied by the Minister of Defence Aleksandar Vulin and the Minister of Health Zlatibor Lončar, inspected today the construction of a new Covid hospital in the “Zemun ekonomija” Military Complex in Belgrade.
As President Vučić pointed out, it is a multi-purpose hospital that has to be completed by 1 December and that should help us deal with this “vicious disease”.- We expect to have various forms of the infection in the future and that is the reason why this hospital is extremely important. We have been preparing, and simultaneously, construction of a twice smaller hospital in Kruševac is in progress, which is important for that part of Serbia. At the time when people thought that we were nearing the end of the pandemic, we made a decision to build the hospitals because we wanted to take care of people’s lives and construct a hospital that will further increase the capacities of the Serbian health care system – emphasized President Vučić and added that a lot of money was invested in the renewal of the health system, about 170 million euros.
According to him, protection of people’s lives and health care are of the utmost importance and they show the state’s strength – health care system of a state is a reflection of the state itself and he emphasized that Serbia’s investment shows "how determined we are to take care of people."
The President of the Republic expressed his satisfaction with the progress of the Covid hospital construction that he inspected today and pointed out that the hospital will have between 200 and 300 intensive care units, because “hard times” are coming.
- The situation in Europe and the region is horrible, and in Serbia, it is quite good at the moment. We are apprehensive and I ask everyone to be disciplined and try to prevent severe consequences in the autumn and winter – said President Vučić and thanked the “Termomont” company, as well as about 400 workers who work every day.
The President of Serbia expressed special gratitude to the Ministry of Defence and the Serbian Armed Forces who “are doing their jobs exceptionally well”.- You played a big role and did a great job both in Karaburma and here today, and I believe that you will do the same in the future – emphasized President Vučić and told the citizens that Serbia is currently “one of the safest countries in Europe in terms of Covid, and definitely the safest in the region”.
The new Covid hospital within the Military Complex “Zemun ekonomija” in Batajnica will have 1,000 hospital beds, and in addition to the hospital, it is planned to construct the supporting infrastructure, access roads and slip roads. This 18,000 square metre hospital will be the most important and the largest hospital for the treatment of Covid patients in our country. The Ministry of Defence provided an appropriate location out of the land used by that Ministry.
Answering reporters’ questions, President Vučić said that ten years ago there was nothing in the Armed Forces, that the best plane was one of the two MiG-21 planes, and that there were no serious planes like MiGs-29 or serious helicopters. The President also said that in that period, there were no pay rises in the Armed Forces, no boots or equipment, emphasizing that today in Serbia, no sphere of social life is as bad as it was then.
State Secretary at the Ministry of Defence Bojan Jocić, Head of the Military Health Department, Major-General Uglješa Jovičić, Director of the Clinic for Infectious Diseases, Dr. Goran Stevanović, the CEO of the “Termomont” company, Dejan Burčul, representatives of the Ministry of Defence and the Serbian Armed Forces and other institutions involved in the construction of the hospital also visited the construction site today.
