The Debe cam­pus is set to come in­to op­er­a­tion for the up­com­ing aca­d­e­m­ic year, but the in­te­gra­tion of the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal in­to the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies med­ical fac­ul­ty is still to be ironed out.

This was con­firmed by UWI St Au­gus­tine Prin­ci­pal Bri­an Copeland, at his of­fice at the UWI cam­pus on Thurs­day.

"I would like it to open to­mor­row, so we can get full use of it al­most im­me­di­ate­ly. Every day it sits there it is ba­si­cal­ly a strain, as far as I am con­cerned, on the pub­lic purse. We are look­ing to see if we can ramp up with at least one of the units in the teach­ing fa­cil­i­ty come Sep­tem­ber. I am not so sure if it will work as yet be­cause we have to put all of the pieces to­geth­er first," said Copeland, who added it would be dif­fi­cult to com­mit to an ex­act date for the open­ing for the fa­cil­i­ty to class­es.

"The fa­cil­i­ty works as a whole so we can't just move in­to one part of it just like that. That's go­ing to be trou­ble, so once we sort that out if we can get it, then Sep­tem­ber, if not by Jan­u­ary of the next year then we will do so. But I don't want to make any com­mit­ment at this point in time."

The Uni­ver­si­ty has a 51 per cent stake of the com­pa­ny Cou­va Med­ical Mul­ti-train­ing Fa­cil­i­ty which over­sees op­er­a­tions of the hos­pi­tal but Copeland said there was al­so cer­tain agree­ments that need­ed to be fi­nalised with a still to be iden­ti­fied op­er­a­tor of the hos­pi­tal.

The hos­pi­tal's equip­ment would al­so need to be cleared for use be­fore op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion.

"The hos­pi­tal is ful­ly equipped. Al­though I am told that de­pend­ing on what you want to get in­to when you op­er­ate the hos­pi­tal we might have to add more equip­ment. There is al­so a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process which is re­quired to start this hos­pi­tal up. You have to go through the whole process of check­ing the equip­ment. It takes about six months, I un­der­stand, to go from ze­ro to full op­er­a­tion," said Copeland con­cern­ing the sta­tus of the hos­pi­tal.

Ear­li­er dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence, UWI Vice-Chan­cel­lor Pro­fes­sor Sir Hi­lary Beck­les said the Uni­ver­si­ty was very much in­trigued by the po­ten­tial of the hos­pi­tal's in­te­gra­tion in­to the Uni­ver­si­ty, with oth­er coun­tries seek­ing to cre­ate sim­i­lar part­ner­ships with oth­er hos­pi­tals in Caribbean ter­ri­to­ries.

Copeland said de­spite a cou­ple of de­lays on some build­ings the Debe cam­pus is ex­pect­ed to be opened with 500 stu­dents main­ly from the fac­ul­ty of hu­man­i­ties.