escalating installation costs finally arrived.

Roughly $240,000 was paid out last April for the unit alone.

However, it then sat in storage for months in Miami because the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital could not afford an unexpected $1 million dollar installation cost.

No final figures have been made available, but Carol Ferris, the physician consultant for hyperbaric medicine, said installation work and staff training would soon begin and the chamber could be operational by July 1.

The unit, which weighs 11 tonnes and is 22-feet long, can accommodate up to nine patients and will be housed on the ground floor of the new hospital wing next to the diabetes and ultrasound centres.

The current chamber can only seat two people. But Dr. Ferris explained the new technology would not only be used for diving victims. "The intent is to use it to help problem wounds to heal,'' she said. Patients with badly infected wounds, crushed injuries, or with post surgical or medical complications could all benefit from the chamber, she said.

When used along with antibiotics, the chamber could be used to place patients in an environment with twice the normal atmospheric pressure and pure oxygen.