CONSTRUCTION of the $145-million operating theatre/intensive care unit at the University Hospital of the West Indies should be rolling full steam shortly following Thursday’s $3-million donation from GTECH Jamaica.

All that is needed now, according to head of the hospital’s fundraising committee, R Danny Williams, is another $3 million. He anticipates no problems in securing that sum.

“We’ll be fully funded, hopefully by the end of the month. We only have two people who we are waiting on and once we hear from them we will be fully funded. We are down to the last $3 million,” he told the Observer.

Until then, he said he was grateful for GTECH’s $3-million cheque, which was handed over to him at the construction site Thursday.

Ann-Dawn Young Sang, GTECH Jamaica’s finance manager, said the company, which has been operating in the island since 2001 as the technical provider for Supreme Ventures Limited, felt the project worthy of their contribution.

“We figured that it was a project that was well overdue. This project serves to benefit not only the Jamaican people but also our brothers and sisters throughout the Caribbean,”

Young Sang said. “So GTECH thought it fit within our outlook, in that we always believe in wherever we operate throughout the world to be good corporate citizens, and we decided that we wanted to be a part of this venture,” she added.

The project, which began in April last year, includes the construction of:

. two operating theatres;

. an eight-bed intensive care unit; and

. two lecture theatres.

“What it is doing is doubling the intensive care unit for the university hospital and it is adding the two critical operating theatres, one for cardiothoracic surgery and one for neurological surgery, which were vitally needed.

“We have excellent surgeons and nurses… But we didn’t have these facilities and you can’t operate without the intensive care to back it up. So, we actually have people who are dying for lack of operation,” Williams said.

That, however, is expected to change once the project is completed and becomes fully operational by the middle of the year.

“When this facility is finished… we will hopefully, in 18 months, clear the backlog of people in need of operations.

“We are happy for that because it will make a world of difference for the entire country,” Williams said.

Meanwhile, the committee head said the new facilities would shortly be outfitted with the requisite equipment, which is to cost another $100 million.

The government, Williams said, is providing the equipment.

GTECH Jamaica’s parent company, GTECH Corporation, has earned a reputation as a leader in online lottery systems and services over the last 15 years. The company, whose online lottery systems and services attract up to a billion dollars in revenues annually, spans six continents with customers in 44 countries.