DHA Director-General Inspects Progress Of Expansion Projects

DUBAI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News / WAM - 16th Dec, 2018) Keeping pace with the growing population and the need to improve specialised care, the Dubai Health Authority, DHA, has undertaken significant expansion plans in areas of need to provide high-quality medical services to the population and visitors.

Humaid Al Qutami, Director-General of the DHA, recently inspected the progress of some of the projects under construction at the DHA.

The new Al Qusais Centre will add to the network of 14 DHA Primary healthcare centres, PHCs, in the Emirate. DHA has the largest number of internationally accredited primary healthcare centres. In addition to the Al Qusais Centre, which is expected to be completed by mid-2019, DHA will also complete construction of two new PHC’s at Umm Suqeim and Abu Hail by the end of 2019.

The Authority replaced the old centre with the new one to keep pace with population growth and provide highly specialised medical care.

The centre will cater to the medical needs of the community and provide a wide range of health services, including child health, family medicine, chronic disease clinics, ENT services, along with having a modern radiology department.

Nearly 500,000 residents, both nationals and expatriates, visited the DHA's primary health care centres in 2017 just for consultations in family medicine.

Al Qutami highlighted that primary healthcare is frontline care and the DHA focuses on providing a wide range of medical services at the level of PHC’s to ensure easy access to care, regular follow-up care and to teach the concept of preventive care.

Medical services provided at the centres include family medicine, radiology, childcare, gynaecology, paediatrics, dermatology, nutrition, dentistry, chronic diseases, pre-marital testing, pharmaceutical services, and intermediate level urgent cases. They also provide additional services, such as home care services, community health services, such as anti-smoking clinics, and they offer a range of screening packages as part of their preventive outreach and educational health programmes.

Since 2015, two DHA centres, Al Barsha and Nad Al Hammar, have provided round-the-clock services and offer urgent medical care so that only emergency cases need to be seen in a hospital setting.

In addition, the Long-Term Care Centre will be located the Seniors’ Happiness Centre complex. The 120-bed centre will cater to the needs of long-term patients and will provide them with a positive environment to promote healing.

Other expansion projects that are in the pipeline include the Cardiology Centre of Excellence; Oncology Centre of Excellence; Rashid Medical Complex and Latifa Hospital.