The creation of a modern pulmonary clinic in Kyperounda will help revive the Troodos area, the community’s leader Georgios Panayiotou said on Monday.

He was responding to last week’s announcement that a €2.5m state of the art pulmonary clinic will be added to the community’s existing tuberculosis sanatorium that dates back to 1936.

The new clinic will be set up in the old three-storey stone building that in the past was used as nurses’ sleeping quarters.

The announcement came around three years after the government decided a better-equipped TB sanatorium, with negative pressure rooms, was needed to comply with the World Health Organisation (WHO) requirements.

Currently, the sanatorium has 16 beds dedicated to TB patients, but due to the increase in TB cases in recent years patients have been forced to share rooms, which goes against WHO guidelines recommending one person per room. The sanatorium also needs negative pressure rooms, which are vital in combating and stopping the disease from spreading through the air.

“The new clinic will not only treat TB cases, but it will cover the needs of patients with various pulmonary diseases,” Panayiotou told the Cyprus Mail.

In the early 1970s a pathology clinic was also set up in the same building as the sanatorium. Today the hospital with a 26 bed capacity, serves the wider Troodos area of around 84 communities, Panayiotou said.

“At last, the government was convinced that the hospital needs to be upgraded,” Panayiotou said.

He added that if works begin in May or June, the pulmonary clinic will be up and running within 15 months, while there are also plans to upgrade the hospital’s emergency room, aiming to provide better service to the communities’ residents and visitors.

Plans for the pulmonary clinic have already attracted the interest of the private and state universities’ medical schools he said.

“They have expressed the wish for the clinic to become a university hospital for medical students to do their practice and specialisations.”

There has also been interest on behalf of private companies to build a rehabilitation centre close to the hospital.

“This will attract medical tourism,” Panayiotou said.

The community leader said all these plans would help revive the Troodos communities, as new jobs will be created and younger workers encouraged to stay in the area.

But he warned that it was imperative that construction on the Limassol-Trimiklini road go ahead. The project has been delayed by the economic crisis.

At the moment, Panayiotou said, the travelling time from Kyperounda to Limassol, can take up to an hour and a half as the road is narrow and cars get stuck behind buses and lorries.

“With the Limassol-Trimiklini road, it will take around 20 minutes, so people can easily live in Kyperounda and drive to Limassol to work,” he said.