Bordet Institute inaugurates €400m facility dedicated to cancer care and research

The new facilities of the Jules Bordet Institute were inaugurated this week on the Erasmus campus in Anderlecht. With more than 80,000m² and a jump from 160 to 250 beds, the new building entirely dedicated to the fight against cancer thus increases its capacity for hospital treatment, its spaces for advanced technologies and its research laboratories by more than 50%.

The establishment joins the Erasmus University Hospital, the Faculty of Medicine of the Free University of Brussels (ULB), the School of Motricity Sciences, the Haute École Ilya Prigogine and the School of Public Health on the Anderlecht campus in order to bring together care, faculties and research on the same site, which will "strengthen the diagnosis and treatment of oncological pathologies in Belgium" according to its managing director, Francis de Drée.

The 10,000m² dedicated to oncology research will allow between 100 and 120 research projects to be carried out each year. The management also plans 85,000 specialist consultations and 4,700 surgical treatments per year, thanks to nearly 1,200 staff members.

To do this, a new state-of-the-art technological unit is installed in the basement of the Institute which will house two MRIs, two CT scanners and a stereotaxis table (medical imaging for breast cancer).

A total of €72 million has been invested in medical equipment and devices, with a budget of €400 million for the entire project.

Concurrent with the move, the Bordet Institute is joining the Erasmus University Hospital and the Queen Fabiola University Children’s Hospital in Laeken to create the new Brussels University Hospital (HUB).

The objective of this grouping, implemented in recent months by the ULB and the City of Brussels, is to contribute to the development of a new benchmark in public hospital care on an international scale. The HUB will eventually have a set of 1,420 approved beds, 840 doctors and 4,000 non-medical staff.

"This is an important milestone that has just been reached in the history of each of these three institutions but also for our country," said Annemie Schaus, rector of ULB. "By working to create a new higher level in public care, we are shaping a hospital model that enshrines the excellence and accessibility of the care that these hospitals provide every day."