Minister of Public Health, H E Dr Hanan Mohamed Al Kuwari, with other officials duirng the opening of the first Qatar Public Health Conference at the Ritz-Carlton, Doha, yesterday.
In another attempt to ensure health promotion and wellness for the population of Qatar, a first of its kind Public Health Conference began in the presence of Minister of Public Health, H E Dr Hanan Mohamed Al Kuwari, yesterday.
The biennial Qatar Public Health Conference is organised by the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) in collaboration with the World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH), a global initiative of Qatar Foundation.
The two-day conference is held under the theme, ‘10 Years of Public Health: Looking back, moving forward’, at the Ritz Carlton, Doha.
Many key public health accomplishments achieved over the last decade were highlighted during the conference. It also emphasised on the importance of cooperating with all partners to address the public health challenges in the next decade.
H E Al Kuwari acknowledged that public health issues are of highest priority and in 2017 a specialized public health strategy was launched under the umbrella of the National Health Strategy.
“The first Qatar Public Health Conference is an important event to view and make use of local, regional, and global expertise and experiences in the field of public health. It is also important to extrapolate our progress over the next ten years in accordance with the national plans and strategies that aim to strengthen and maintain sustainability of the health system and ensure an efficient attainment of Qatar National Vision 2030 related to health,” she said in a statement.
H E Al Kuwari, emphasised on a number of outstanding achievements reached in public health, including improvements in reproductive health, maternal, neonatal and child health, decrease in number of premature deaths due to non-communicable diseases, reducing mortality and traffic injuries significantly, and enhancing the control of infectious diseases.
The rate of coverage of all vaccines under the National Vaccination Program has reached over 95% and according to the Global Audit Tobacco Survey data, there has been a decrease of about 40% in the young smokers aged 13-15 years between 2004 and 2018 in Qatar, according to H E Al Kuwari.
The first Qatar Public Health Conference has brought together more than 500 participants across different sectors. It also feature more than 50 local, regional and international speakers. Public health services, including prevention, protection, health promotion, communicable diseases, non-communicable diseases, food safety and environmental health are discussed during the conference.
“The conference covers the scope of public health in accordance with the ‘health in all policies’ approach, and addressing the public health challenges in Qatar requires cooperation between all sectors in the country to support governance, share health data and information, and develop workforce capabilities, which represent the strategic enablers of the Public Health Strategy 2017-2022,” said Shaikh Dr Mohamed bin Ahmed Al Thani, Director of Public Health Department at MoPH in his opening remarks.
“In Qatar, in common with regional and global trends, we face many public health challenges, particularly the growing burden of non-communicable diseases. Qatar will also be on the global stage like never before during the FIFA World Cup 2022,” he added.
Separately speaking to media on the sidelines of the conference, he further empathized achievements in the area of public health including road traffic accidents reduced from 2006 to 2018 by 83 percent.
“We are the country only country to lower deaths due to road accidents from 26 for 100,000 to less than 6 for 100,000. We have achieved the goal of reaching all type of injuries to less than ten percent among all diseases in Qatar,” he said.
“We have recorded zero deaths of women die in childbirth, or as a result of complications arising from pregnancy during the last three years and child mortality rate has reduced,” he added.
According to Dr Al Thani, deaths from non-communicable diseases is less than six percent among all deaths in Qatar which is better than America and France.
Dr David Celentano, Chairman of the John Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health in his key note speech on ‘Power of Public Health in Qatar,’ said that Qatar is rightly approaching and proving world class public health services.
