More than £400m is to be invested in hospitals and health centres throughout Scotland, it has been announced.

The funding package has been outlined by Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. The projects will be funded through the Scottish Government's non-profit distributing (NPD) model, which is a form of public-private partnership. It also caps private sector returns, and any surplus is redirected to the public sector rather than the shareholders.

The main beneficiary of the £409m funding package will be the Royal Edinburgh Hospital Campus, which will receive an additional £120m to complete its redevelopment.

The other projects include:

• £90m to develop Aberdeen Women's Hospital

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• £20m for the new Aberdeen Cancer Centre

• £65m East Lothian Community Hospital

• £20m community health projects in Highland including Skye, Lochalsh, south west Ross-shire and in Badenoch and Strathspey

• £19m for primary care in NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde

• £19m primary care projects in Grampian including Newmachar, Balmedie Blackburn and Elsick.

Ms Sturgeon commented: "These health projects will provide state-of-the-art facilities to care for thousands of patients across Scotland.

"This £409 million investment will deliver the highest quality of health and social care services. This government's vision is to deliver world-leading safe, effective and person-centred healthcare.

"Today's announcement demonstrates that, despite the massive cuts to Scotland's capital budget from Westminster, the Scottish Government will continue to deliver substantial investment in the infrastructure of the NHS through use of the innovative NPD model and the Hub programme."

Barry White, Chief Executive of the Scottish Futures Trust (SFT), which developed NPD for the government, added: "This massive investment in healthcare will deliver first-class, well designed buildings to support local healthcare and create thousands of jobs across Scotland. The SFT-managed £3.5bn NPD programme stands as one of the largest infrastructure investment programme of its type across Europe."

(JP/IT)