THE first part of Hereford's new district general hospital is expected to come into service in the next few weeks, writes ELIZABETH WATKINS.

It is 17 months since the bulldozers moved on to the county hospital site to start work on providing Herefordshire's 170,000 population with the modern hospital promised, and in the pipeline, for 25 years.

Now it is one step closer with the completion of what is called the Support Wing and without which no hospital can survive.

The Support Wing is described as the hub of the hospital, providing heating, air conditioning, power and all sterilising services as well being the distribution centre for stores and providing an on-the-spot base for hospital maintenance.

The facilities it will provide in Hereford are said to be among the best in the country, the best you can get and up to European standards.

At the moment they are being put through their paces in exhaustive tests.

"It is a complex task, checking the quality of water and steam and ensuring that sterilisation works at the right level. Nothing is being left to chance,'' said Ken Lee, director of facilities for Hereford Hospitals Trust.

He is optimistic that things are on course and the building will soon be in business.

When it is, Hereford hospitals will have the only unit in Herefordshire that is legally capable of providing sterile services for outside use, rather than only for its own internal use.

The new high-tech facilities are a far cry from those which now service the three hospitals in Hereford, all of which will eventually be replaced by those in the new building.

"We have stressed the advantages and the high-tech nature of the new hospital. We can now demonstrate what we have been talking about,'' said Bob Tucker, general manager of Mercia Healthcare Ltd who are building it.

The ground floor of the building holds three gas- fuelled boilers with oil back- up.

Any one of these boilers is capable of meeting the power demands of the whole hospital.

Workshops for maintenance are also based on the ground floor together with the distribution centre for stores.

The first floor of the building is largely devoted to offices and stores for Mercia Healthcare who will be responsible for running the non-medical side of the new hospital.

State-of-the art comes into its own on the second floor with the provision of the sterile services department.

A lot of shopping around was done to get the best system for Hereford and the one chosen, after advice from Guy's Hospital, is said to be the only one which provides all the solutions to the grey areas which staff locally wished to resolve.

It is here that all the equipment used in operating theatres, and other medical departments, is sterilised. It holds advanced and integrated sterilisation equipment and computers are able to track every instrument that comes in for sterilisation from the patient to the steriliser and back again.

Separate 'dirty' and 'clean' lifts ensure that clean and dirty instruments never come into contact with each other.

The top floor of the building is the plant room for high-tech air conditioning equipment. It's a maze of valves, pipes, ducts, controls, fans and air filtration units, all designed to reduce to a minimum the risk, or spread, of infection.