ROME — The Bambino Gesù pediatric hospital has begun dismantling its historic Gianicolo campus and rebuilding every ward, operating theatre and neonatal incubator at an altitude of 5,364 metres on the South Col of Mount Everest, administrators confirmed Tuesday, saying the move was necessary to «properly contextualise» the facility's fourth-place ranking in Newsweek's World's Best Specialized Hospitals.
The relocation, which began at dawn when the first convoy of ventilators left Rome strapped to the backs of yaks, will see the hospital's entire staff of 2,400 — including surgeons, anaesthesiologists and the clown therapy unit — complete a mandatory acclimatisation rotation before treating their first patient at the new site. «We felt that Rome's sea-level air was giving our outcomes an unfair advantage,» said the hospital's director of strategic positioning, Dr. Elena Marchetti, speaking from a base camp where she was supervising the installation of a CT scanner inside a reinforced tent. «If we are to be truly the best in Europe, we must be the best in Europe under conditions that would kill a lesser institution.»
The Italian Alpine Club has been contracted to carve a 14-kilometre access road into the Khumbu Icefall, and a fleet of cable cars is under construction to ferry parents from Kathmandu to the new neonatal intensive care unit, which will be heated by a geothermal plant drilled directly into the mountain. Hospital officials noted that the first scheduled procedure — a routine tonsillectomy — has been postponed until the surgical team completes its final ascent, expected in early 2027.
Newsweek has not yet commented on whether the ranking will be adjusted to account for the move, but a spokesperson for the magazine said the methodology «has always valued ambition.»