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Dubai Health Care City 'will be location of choice in 6 years'

DUBAI - The UAE will become the primary gateway for specialised, technology-supported medical services in the region, through implementing the highest international standards in health care, research, information management and strategic planning, according to UAE Health Minister, Hamad Abdul Rahman Al Midfa.

Mr Midfa, delivering the opening speech at MedHealth Dubai 2004, the annual meetings of the Arab Hospitals Federation (AHF), being held at the Dubai International Convention Centre, stressed the need to take a unified stance to meeting Arab health care challenges towards the establishment of a common Arab Health Care System. He said that with the support of the UAE Ministry of Health, the Dubai Health Care City (DHCC) would achieve the vision of General Shaikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and UAE Defence Minister, in the area of health care. The DHCC will, by 2010, become a globally acknowledged location of choice for health care and a centre of excellence for specialised medical services.

Mr Midfa welcomed top health officials from the region to the meeting, citing the heavy burden that each one bears to raise the standard of health care in their countries, adding that the annual meeting of the AHF only reaffirms health officials' commitment to change. "The UAE has long made it a point to strengthen regional cooperation with various countries in the area, as part of the UAE's general strategic framework to open up to the world and to benefit from pioneering experiences in all areas and to maintain strong and effective ties with all Arab societies," Mr Midfa said.

He said the experience of the DHCC to date is exemplary in its drive to strengthen its position as an international medical centre by building a network of strategic alliances with the most prominent international medical institutions.

"It is my desire that at this meeting we work together to meet the goals of developing the Arab health care sector and strengthen joint cooperative efforts between various health care establishments in the Arab region, in order to unify efforts aimed at establishing a common Arab health care system," Mr Midfa said.

Present at the two-day meeting were the Kuwaiti Health Minister, Dr Mohammed Ahmad Al Jarallah, representatives from the health and tourism ministries of Lebanon, Morocco and Egypt, Dr Hussein Al Jazairi, Regional Representative of the World Health Organisation, and representatives of the World Bank Organisation.

The first day's sessions of the Medical Programme focused exclusively on diabetes, cardiovascular disease and hypertension, chronic diseases that are fast reaching epidemic proportions in the Gulf region and the Middle East. The first day's sessions of the Health Management Programme focused on health sector reform and health tourism in the Arab world.