Overview

• He toured an acute elderly care ward and spoke with patients including 85-year-old Jacqueline Page and 73-year-old Matthew Shinda, a prostate cancer patient.
• Asked about his health, the King replied "I am not too bad" and quipped that "the bits don’t work so well when you get past 70."
• He unveiled a commemorative plaque to mark the opening, which Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust chair Sir David Nicholson called a "tremendous honour."
• He met the hospital’s first baby, Hernata Yonas, and her parents, Semhar Tesfu and Yonas Kflu, as crowds of staff, patients, medical students and volunteers gathered.
• The hospital is a 736-bed facility that began treating patients on October 6 last year, and the visit followed his earlier tour of Birmingham’s Oratory of St Philip Neri.