Construction work on veterinary charity PDSA’s new pet hospital in Oldbury, Birmingham, has started.
The new hospital, located off Wolverhampton Road, will replace the current PDSA facility on Hagley Road West, Quinton.
It will cost £1.5 million to build and equip, so the charity is urging local pet lovers to ‘dig deep’ and support the project.
Scheduled for completion in summer this year, the new hospital will bear the name The Marian and Christina Ionescu Centre of Surgical Excellence, following a generous donation towards the building costs, including the major operating theatre.
The hospital will be the charity’s first centre of surgical excellence. Its design means it will be a hub of surgical excellence for pets in need in the region.
The purpose-built facility will have state-of-the-art operating theatres, a critical care ward and the latest diagnostic and surgical equipment, to help the vet teams deliver outstanding surgical care for sick and injured pets.
The new facility will also act as a teaching hospital to further advance and develop the veterinary skills of graduate and specialist vets.
PDSA Director General Jan McLoughlin visited the site with her own dog, Bobby, to lend a paw and officially kick-off construction work (pictured above).
Commenting on the new hospital, Jan said: “We are all so excited to see work start on our new pet hospital. Our current site in Quinton is much-loved but it’s time to move on . We have seen a 79% increase in the number of pets in the Black Country and Birmingham needing our help since 2006. After 40 years of intense use, our old site is no longer fit for purpose.”
PDSA’s dedicated team of vets and nurses in Quinton currently provide over 90,000 treatments a year and can see up to 190 pet patients every single day. The new pet hospital will allow staff to increase these numbers by around 25% to provide over 112,000 treatments annually.
