The U.S. military has announced plans to build a $435 million health care center at Guantánamo Bay, where the old base hospital currently resides. The center will provide health care options for prison guards at the center.
The current hospital has been in place for nearly 70 years and is the only health care option for the outpost’s nearly 6,000 residents.
A proposal for the new health center described the current two-story hospital as being at “significant risk of catastrophic failure.”
But not everyone agrees, including Defense Health Agency spokesman Peter Graves, who said concerns about the hospital were initially detailed in a 2018 engineering report and have since “been remediated.”
“Barring some unforeseen extreme weather or systemic event, and recognizing the facility will need ongoing repairs, the facility is still functional and operational,” Graves said.
One thing that appears to be lacking in the proposal for the new center are facilities for prisoners of war being held at Guantánamo Bay, The New York Times shared in a report.
The proposal says that instead, when prisoners need health care, they will be evacuated to a U.S. hospital for treatment. This does create some concern, as 35 prisoners there now cannot enter the U.S. for any reason.
The Pentagon has not commented on the lack of detainee care in the new proposal. However, Lt. Col. Cesar Santiago did share in a statement that the U.S. is still attempting to reduce the number of prisoners being kept there.
“The United States is focused on responsibly reducing the detainee population and ultimately closing the Guantánamo Bay detention facility,” Santiago said in a statement. “The Department of Defense remains committed to providing appropriate medical care, in accordance with the law, to military personnel, dependents and detainees located at Naval Station Guantánamo Bay.”
The details of the new health care center were shared with possible contractors by the Navy, in a 3,000 page prospectus, the Times reported.
But before anyone can sign on to build the “Ambulatory Care Center,” Congress must approve $187 million in construction funds that will be apart of the 2024 fiscal year budget.
The plans for building the new health care facility come as the Biden administration has shared its intentions of closing detention operations. The military has also been reducing its prison staff.
However, a chart in the proposal says that prison staffing by 2029 will be back to where it was during the early parts of former President Donald Trump’s administration.
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