On Wednesday, April 22, Attikon University General Hospital in Athens held a blessing ceremony for the new building complex being added to its campus through a grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) as part of its Global Health Initiative (GHI). SNF Co-President Andreas Dracopoulos spoke during the event, and remarks were also given by Minister of Health Adonis Georgiadis, University of Athens Rector Gerasimos Siasos, Attikon General University Hospital Administrator Spyridon Apostolopoulos, and NKUA Medical School Assistant Professor Panagiotis Koulouvaris.
A blessing for new construction at Attikon University General Hospital in Athens
22 April 2026
Andreas said:
“All of us at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) are particularly proud to support the construction of three new hospitals—in Komotini, Thessaloniki, and Sparta—which will be an invaluable addition and significant reinforcement to Greece’s National Health System. However, it is hospitals such as Attikon General University Hospital that serve as the flagships of our national health care system and have remained at the forefront of patient care for decades, often under adverse conditions, earning the trust of the public over time. We would like to express our heartfelt thanks to the nursing, medical, and administrative staff, as well as the cleaning personnel, for their tireless dedication. Their tireless efforts have made Attikon an integral and invaluable pillar of the National Health System, and we are delighted to have the opportunity to support their work once again.”
The new building complex will include a place for on-call medical staff to stay, addressing a long-standing structural shortcoming at the hospital, which was built without provision for beds for on-call medical staff, resulting in doctors having to use patient beds during their shifts. The construction of a specialized building will immediately free up already-equipped rooms for inpatient care, thereby enhancing the hospital’s overall capacity to serve patients while also ensuring appropriate on-call facilities for medical and nursing staff. The building complex will also house a coordination center for the Mobile Medical Units, implemented by Regeneration & Progress in collaboration with Health Units S.A., under the scientific supervision of the First Orthopedic Clinic of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA) and created at the initiative of and supported in full by SNF. It will also house the Center for Therapeutic Exercise, as well as the SNF Complex Joint Reconstruction Center.
The new buildings are expected to be completed and handed over to the Greek state in 2027. The grant for their construction is part of SNF’s Global Health Initiative (GHI). With a total budget exceeding one billion dollars, the GHI includes more than 100 grants in Greece and abroad, such as the design, construction and outfitting of three new, state-of-the-art hospitals in Komotini, Thessaloniki, and Sparta, procurement of critical equipment such as air ambulances for the National Center of Emergency Care (EKAV), mental health initiatives, training programs for health care providers, and a broad framework of international partnerships to promote innovation and the exchange of expertise and best practices.
