EUR 149m to be spent on health-care development projects in Budapest

The funds are allocated under an earlier agreement between the Hungarian government and the municipality

The Hungarian government will provide from the state budget 50 billion forints (EUR 149m) to the city of Budapest for health-care development projects over the next five years. The cash injection comes due to an earlier bilateral agreement, the head of the Prime Minister’s Office Gergely Gulyás and the mayor of Budapest Gergely Karácsony said in a joint statement on Tuesday, quoted by Hungary Today.

According to the statement, this year HUF 2 billion will be allocated for eliminating waiting lists for MRI and CT scans following a government-proposed formula. Another HUF 8 billion will be distributed among Budapest districts to improve the quality of outpatient care “with no regard to the district mayor’s party affiliation or the local assembly’s composition”. Preference will be given to districts with insufficient health-care facilities or where the existing health institutions struggle to serve too many residents.

Mayor opposed to “super-hospitals” network

The government has undertaken to build, by 2023, a huge, state-of-the-art complex in Budapest dubbed South Buda Central Hospital (DBC). DBC is planned to be linked to two existing hospitals expecting renovation. The network of the three central “super-hospitals” would provide healthcare services to some 4 million people.

The project, billed as the biggest healthcare investment endeavor in Hungary for the last hundred years, will be implemented under the government’s Healthy Budapest Program. The program envisages HUF 700 billion to be allocated for the healthcare infrastructure development of Budapest and Hungary’s central region.

Budapest’s new opposition leadership, however, is not happy with the government’s flashy and expensive projects in healthcare and elsewhere.

In an interview with Népszava ahead of the 2019 municipal elections, Gergely Karácsony said that “the super-hospital project is only about giving more construction projects to the buddies.”

He said that he preferred existing medical facilities to be renovated instead of building new “monster institutions”.