The migration of services from Boffa Hospital in Floriana to the new Sir Anthony Mamo oncology centre has been completed, the Parliamentary Secretary for Health, Chris Fearne, said this afternoon.

The new 113-bed centre, adjoining Mater Dei Hospital, welcomed its first outpatients in December. The migration of services and in-patients started last month and new state-of-the art linear accelerators have now been commissioned.

Parliamentary Secretary Chris Fearne congratulated the staff on completion of the migration process.

Only a small number of patients, who need to complete their treatment on the machines they had started it with, remain at Boffa. 

The site of the new oncology centre started being excavated in 2010 and building started in 2012.

The facility cost €52 million and an estimated €8 million a year are required to run it.

No decision has been taken yet about the future on Boffa Hospital, although its conversion into a small hotel has been suggested.

Sir Paul Boffa Hospital, former King George V (KGV) Hospital was opened in 1922 as a memorial to the men of the British Merchant Navy who died in World War I. The building was severely damaged by aerial bombing in 1942 but hospital services were never interrupted.

The hospital was rebuilt in 1948 under the premiership of Paul Boffa and renamed Sir Paul Boffa Hospital in 1976.