The year 2013 will be significant for the Hamad Medical Corporation, which has set for itself “master facility plans” that will give a fillip to healthcare services in Qatar. Part of the plans, according to the recently released HMC 2010 annual report, was to deliver and equip three major hospitals at Medical City, including an all-new Ambulatory and Minimally Invasive Surgery (AMiS) Hospital, Women’s Hospital and Rehabilitation Hospital as well as a translational research centre. The AMiS Hospital will have 14 surgical operating rooms equipped with all resuscitation requirements, 12 pre-operative care beds, 22 post-anesthesia care beds, 30 stage two recovery beds, pre-admission testing, phlebotomy, gastrointestinal/endoscopy suite, clinics for podiatry, ent/audiology, ophthalmology, and urology, in addition to some 64 short-stay beds. The ground floor will house a state-of-the-art medical imaging suite to provide services to all of Medical City hospitals and programmes. Facilities will include two magnetic resonance imaging machines, two CT scanners, one interventional radiology, two fluoroscopy, four general X-ray and 10 ultrasound rooms. Already, a QR1.9bn deal has been signed with the Public Works Authority (Ashghal) and South Korea’s Hyundai Engineering and Construction Company for furnishing and equipping the hospitals and a research centre. The whole complex will have a built-up area of 216,000msq and more than 500 beds and the projects handover has been scheduled for December 2013. Work on replacing the existing Women’s Hospital has been ongoing for some time now with conceptual space planning for the new 11-storey building. The 190 single inpatient beds hospital will also have 53 neonatal intensive care (nicU) beds, 60 examination rooms, more than 48 bassinets for newborn babies, four cesarean section and three obstetrics and gynecology operating theatres, 21 labour and delivery rooms, integrated management services for cesarean and accident emergency operations, triage rooms, ultrasound rooms, treatment rooms and emergency delivery rooms. The Rehabilitation Hospital has a total capacity of 200 inpatient beds including orthopedic/trauma, stroke, spinal cord injury, traumatic brain injury and pediatrics. It will also include multi-disciplinary inpatient treatment services such as day rehab, physiotherapy, speech therapy, adaptive living apartment, hydrotherapy and the ‘Easy Street’ programme, which will provide real-life environments that can help patients learn to adapt more easily to environments in the real world. Outpatient programmes will also be provided in a multi-disciplinary fashion and will include many programmes such as fall prevention, balance centre, industrial rehab, cardiopulmonary, interventional pain clinic and others. Various support services will also include doppler, ultrasound, clinical laboratory, pharmacy and dialysis. Also, the Translational Research Institute (TRI) scheduled for completion in 2013, will provide state-of-the-art core research facilities to facilitate internationally competitive outcomes in translational (bench to bedside) and clinical research. With a focus on the fields of cancer, trauma, infectious diseases, neuroscience, diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and women’s and children’s health, the TRI will provide researchers with ready access to facilities that would otherwise be unavailable, leading to the translation of basic biomedical discoveries into new diagnostic bio-markers and therapies. The facility will consolidate all research groups across HMC, and encourage collaboration and innovation through a number of cross-cutting themes such as bio-informatics, ethics, molecular imaging, functional genomics, proteomics and metabolomics, clinical imaging, clinical trials and bio-statistics. As a key component of the Academic Health System initiative, the TRI will facilitate the corporation’s development as an internationally recognised and leading health research organisation in the Gulf region. Health awareness campaign begins The Department of Public Health, in co-operation with the Department of Media and Communications at Supreme council of health (SCH) has launched a health awareness campaign, “during Ramadan”, targeting the employees of ministries, foundations and authorities in Qatar. Dr Shaykhah Abu-Shaykhah, head of the department of non-communicable diseases, said that the campaign targeted the employees of the Ministry of Justice, Zakat Fund, the Ministry of Business and Trade, the Qatari Olympic Committee, the Qatar Statistics Authority, and the Public Works Authority during its first stage. E-mails are being used to spread and disseminate various health messages regarding nutrition and sports in Ramadan. The messages also tackled recommendations for those with chronic diseases and methods to quit smoking. The last week of Ramadan will be allocated to messages about health nutrition during Eid. She also stated that this campaign aimed at spreading health awareness about healthy lifestyles in Ramadan and how to acquire new health habits. It also treated diets suitable for the diabetics and those with hypertension. In addition, the campaign focused on helping people quit smoking. Dr Shaykhah said that soon the campaign will cover more ministries and foundations. http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=452108&version=1&template_id=36&parent_id=16

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