On Thursday, President George W. Bush led a ground breaking ceremony for the new medical center to replace Walter Reed hospital.

The new Walter Reed National Medical Center will merge the duties of the existing Army facility in Washington D.C., which was highly criticized last year for squalid conditions and inadequate outpatient care, media reports read at the time shocking the public and forcing three high-level Pentagon officials to step down. The center had already been listed for closure in 2005.

The new 6.7 million-square-feet medical center is expected to be done by 2011 and will have 345 beds. The nearly $1 billion campus will merge the resources of the Army, Navy and Air Force. President Bush underlined the importance of giving U.S. soldiers wounded in the Global War on Terrorism the best treatment.

“At this new center, the Americans who fight for our freedom will get the compassion and support they deserve. This new medical center will be a place of courage. Our wounded warriors show that while the human body is fragile, the human spirit is strong,” he said as quoted by the Voice of America.

He further said that with this new facility wounds would be healed, medical knowledge would be advanced and lives would be given a second chance.

Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, who joined the President in the ceremonial groundbreaking, assured relatives of the wounded that their loved ones will receive the best possible care available. “Our warriors are our country's most important resource and when they return injured or ill from war, we must care for them without fail. This new joint facility will provide America's heroes and their families the most advanced medical care in the world.”

The medical facility destined for treating soldiers first opened in 1909 as Walter Reed General Hospital, in the honor of Maj. Walter Reed, an Army physician and research scientist who discovered that mosquitoes transmit yellow fever.