The Estonian Center for Defense Investments (ECDI) has announced a procurement for the design and construction of a new military and disaster medicine center on the outskirts of Tartu, writes ERR News.
The new center will combine the medical center of the Estonian Defense Forces (EDF), and its medical warehouse and will also have space for disaster medicine training.
The planned medical center will significantly improve the conditions of military medical training. ECDI representative Peeter Karja said that the center will have several simulation rooms that will allow the training participants to learn the necessary skills to provide assistance to seriously wounded soldiers in combat conditions. Currently, this type of training takes place in the temporary container camp in Raadi. Karja said that classes are currently held in classrooms made of containers: “That’s the current level. The new level will mean that we’ll have more than 1,000 square meters of warehouse space
where we can produce water, light and sound effects in order to conduct simulations as realistically as possible.”
An ECDI representative noted that similar exercises are also conducted in field conditions, but the facilities would allow them to be repeated over and over again.
The proximity of both the Estonian Military Academy and the Tartu College of Health Care played a major role in choosing the location. It would also allow students to learn about disaster medicine.
The EDF rehabilitation center will also be moved to Tartu. It is currently located at Seli Castle in Rapla County and is expensive to maintain. Karja explained that the palace has certain requirements related to the preservation of cultural heritage and is very expensive, so the last works done were limited to simple painting.
The Raadi Center will allow EDF to provide rehabilitation services in a modern and suitable environment.
Next to the medical center, there will also be an administrative building, the foundation stone of which has already been laid. In the next few years, the Estonian government plans to invest more than 35 million euros in the construction of the Raadi base.
It is planned that the contract for the construction of the new military and disaster medical center could be signed at the end of the year, and the works will start in the second quarter of next year. The center should be completed by the spring of 2025.