The government has still not set a date for opening the Rosa Emilia de Tavares National Cancer Institute to the public. It was inaugurated a year and a half ago at a stated cost of RD$5 billion. Yesterday, Wednesday 12 February, the authorities reported that the electricity problems had been fixed.
During a press conference held yesterday afternoon at the hospital and headed by the Minister of Public Health Freddy Hidalgo and the director of the Supervising Office of State Works, engineer Miguel Pimentel, the director of the Institute, Francisco Monegro Santos announced that personnel would be sent to Vienna, Austria for several months of training in order to learn how to use several of the machines described as latest generation, including a brachytherapy machine and a cyclotron. (Editor’s note: brachytherapy is the use of high dose radiation seeds place in or near cancers).