Shanghai will invest 600 million yuan (US$84.39 million) to build a hospital in Sanlin, Pudong New Area, to serve an anticipated 70 million visitors to World Expo Shanghai in 2010.

The Shanghai Pudong Hospital is scheduled to open in April 2010. It is said to be the most modern city-level hospital in Shanghai, Jiefang Daily reported.

The 800-bed "Expo hospital" will cover about 3.57 hectares and will be about eight kilometers from the Expo site in Pudong.

It aims to provide services mainly for Shanghai Expo. The hospital will have a helicopter pad and be equipped with digital medical facilities.

Though the hospital will serve the Expo event, it will serve millions of Shanghai residents after the Expo ends, said Fan Jincheng, deputy director of the Social Development Bureau of Pudong.

About 60 percent of families that were relocated to make way for the Expo site now live in Sanlin. The relocation project involved 18,000 families and 272 factories.

Medical facilities in the neighborhood are still poor, said Fan. Sanlin has only three community medical service centers, which don't meet the needs of residents.

After the hospital is built, residents will receive a higher standard of medical care, Fan added.

Fan said he hopes the "Expo hospital" impresses people with its "people-oriented" services. For example, in the hall, the hospital will set up lower registration accounts for those in wheel chairs to keep doctors closer to the patients, Fan said.

All the corridors in the hospital are at least four-meters wide, which is even more than "luxury" hospitals provide.

Shanghai has 38 city-level hospitals.

(Shanghai Daily March 4, 2008)