The universal health care system of Costa Rica (Caja) has doubled its capacity to give radiation treatments to cancer patients with a new building for treatment at Hospital Mexico. The building cost 9 billion colones, approximately $17.3 million US dollars and includes two new linear accelerators, in addition to the two purchased last year.

Cancer, according to the national newspaper La Nacion, is currently the second cause of death in this country and is on its way to becoming the first. An average of one patient per hour, says the paper, is diagnosed with cancer.

The future for cancer patients was not always bright. Some years ago, a technician falsified his credentials and gave dozens of patients a massive overdose of radiation. Most of them died, not of the disease, but from the treatment.

In 2011, waiting lists for treatment became so long that the central office of the Caja had to intervene in radiation treatment. An analysis of the process followed and several officials were dismissed from the department.

Last year, the Caja board turned the situation around with the construction phase of the new facility and purchase of two new linear accelerators. This reduced the time between diagnosis and the beginning of radiation treatments to three weeks.

The new treatment building will make radiation treatment in the Caja self sufficient meaning that the public hospital will not have to farm patients out to private laboratories. Now the Caja will be able to treat 360 patients instead of 180. The new emphasis in cancer treatment means that 25 new personnel have been hired to give radiation and 44 new jobs have been created to administer chemotherapy.

Past defects in the department have meant a cancer death rate of 20%, second only to heart disease. Part of the high death rate has been a waiting period of months for radiation treatments, often because obsolete equipment has been inoperative or laid up for maintenance.

Still, the reason for the investment in radiation treatment is grim: since the 1990s, incidence of the disease have shot up. The rate for women rose 64% from 155 to 254 per 100,000. Among men it rose a stunning 68% from 126 to 212 per 100,000 population.