Nearly 16 years after a fire gutted St Jude Hospital and claimed the lives of three patients, the government is once again promising that the long-delayed reconstruction is nearing completion.
Health officials say most of the physical work at the Vieux Fort site is finished, with many units ready and some equipment already installed. “The construction itself is at an extremely advanced phase…. What’s mostly left is the equipment, the room loading and the transitioning,” Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Health, Jenny Daniel, said in a recent statement.
Officials have also pointed to workers on site putting in shifts as long as 18 hours to meet the timeline.
Health Minister Moses Jn Baptiste insists the hospital will be open to the public by the end of 2025. “The physical work is almost complete,” he said. “Furniture is already being put in many of the rooms, equipment [is] already in Saint Lucia and being installed… very soon, as the Prime Minister has indicated, we keep to our promise that we are going to transition the hospital.”
But the road to this point has been fraught. Since the 2009 fire that killed Jay St Aimée, 17; Claudius Soudine, 60; and Joseph Jn Baptiste, 87, St Jude has operated from the George Odlum Stadium, originally intended only as a temporary site.
Successive administrations, from Stephenson King to Kenny Anthony, Allen Chastanet and now Philip J. Pierre, each pledged to return the hospital to Augier. Instead, years of shifting plans, failed contracts and millions of dollars in spending left the project stalled amid mounting public frustration.
The Pierre administration has since committed a new $201 million loan and contracted Construction & Industrial Equipment Limited (CIE), Arab Towers Contracting Company, Caribbean Consulting Engineers Limited, and Dar Al Omran to rebuild the hospital on its old site and refurbish the now dilapidated stadium.
This week, Opposition Leader Allen Chastanet again criticised the government’s decision to continue rebuilding on the original site, calling it a costly error. He argued that successive administrations “collectively [spent] $400 million [for the old building] to build a hospital which would be outdated and antiquated the moment it opens”.
Between 2016 and 2021, Chastanet’s government advanced a separate “international hospital” project, designed with space for a helipad and a local hospital.
That structure, left incomplete after the COVID-19 pandemic, has since been folded into the Pierre administration’s plans. Officials say it will serve as part of the hospital’s south wing, complementing the main facility.
In all, the reconstructed St Jude is expected to span 12 buildings. At a contract-signing ceremony last September, CEO of the Saudi Fund for Development, Sultan Abdulrahman A Almarshal, announced the new hospital would have a capacity of about 100 beds.
