ISLAMABAD: Pakistan expects to award a contract within 15 days for a long-delayed Saudi-funded hospital in Islamabad, the health minister said on Tuesday, as another 400-bed facility in the capital targets completion by March 2027 and the government launches a Rs6.8 billion ($24 million) diabetes screening program.

The three initiatives come as authorities seek to expand and improve health care in the rapidly growing capital, where public hospitals face heavy patient loads and scrutiny of the system has intensified since a fire at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) killed 14 newborns last month.

Health Minister Syed Mustafa Kamal said 12 companies had participated in bidding for the King Salman Hospital, a project funded by Saudi Arabia that he said had remained stalled for around two decades.

“Saudi Arabia is funding it,” Kamal told reporters during a visit to another hospital project in Islamabad, saying the Saudi embassy and its representatives were involved in the process.

“In the next 15 days, God willing, this contract will be awarded.”

An international tender for construction of the King Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud Hospital closed on Sept. 7, he continued, adding that the hospital would have 400 beds, with the first 200-bed phase expected to become operational within two years.

Kamal said the project’s original design was decades old and had since been revised to meet current requirements before authorities proceeded with the bidding process.

The minister was speaking during a visit to the site of the Federal Government Polyclinic Phase-II extension in Islamabad, a separate 400-bed hospital project that the government now plans to launch in the first quarter of the next year.

“For the people living in Islamabad, this state-of-the-art hospital with 400 beds will be operational in March 2027,” he said.

The expansion comes amid pressure on Islamabad’s existing public hospitals, brought into sharp focus by the Aug. 26 fire in the nursery at PIMS that killed 14 newborns.

Kamal said on Tuesday authorities had asked the Capital Development Authority to conduct fire-safety and structural audits of federal health facilities within 15 days and were also seeking to hire a private firm to carry out a parallel assessment.

Earlier on Tuesday, Kamal announced a Rs6.8 billion diabetes screening program beginning in Islamabad and later expanding to the provinces, as Pakistan grapples with one of the world’s highest rates of the disease.

The World Health Organization estimates 34.5 million people in Pakistan have diabetes, equivalent to around one in three adults and the highest proportional burden globally.

Kamal said the government believed the actual number could be substantially higher because about 10 million people had not been screened.

“We have an estimate that this is a very large population of 4.5 crore people,” he said, referring to an estimated 45 million people with diabetes. “So, we have started this project of screening diabetes. It is a project of Rs6.8 billion.”

He said the screening program would begin in Islamabad before being expanded to the provinces.