Abu Dhabi health sector to undergo major reform

Private and public sectors in Abu Dhabi to coordinate to implement seven key initiatives for transforming the delivery of healthcare in the emirate within the next five years.

Dr Maha Taysir Barakat, Dr Mugheer Khamis Al Khaili, and Dr Asma Al Manaaei, Acting Director of Strategy at the Haad, addressing a Press conference in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday. — KT photo by Nezar Balout

Abu Dhabi — The healthcare sector in Abu Dhabi will undergo reform, focusing on key areas essential for transforming the delivery of healthcare in the emirate within the next five years.

“Today we enter a new phase in the healthcare sector as we aim to take it to the next level of advancement. The foundation is set and it is now time for innovative and better quality services. We will be working with both private and public sectors to ensure implementation of the initiatives,” Dr Mugheer Khamis Al Khaili, chairman of Health Authority – Abu Dhabi (Haad), told reporters on Wednesday.

For this objective, the Haad have identified seven key areas and will work on 58 initiatives under them. They include continuum of care for individuals thereby reducing capacity gaps; improving quality of healthcare; attracting and retaining qualified workforce; emergency preparedness; wellness and prevention of disease; ensuring value for money and sustainability of healthcare spending: and a E-Health programme to create a health information platform.

For the continuum of care, Haad aims to reduce capacity gaps in healthcare services particularly those in rural areas and ensuring that all services are available in the emirate, thus minimising sending patients abroad.

On improving quality of healthcare, Haad will monitor and track the quality of healthcare through the ‘Jawda’ initiative and will eventually publish this data, and facilities that did well will be incentivised while those that didn’t will be disincentivised, according to Professor Maha Taysir Barakat, director general of Haad.

The authority is also working on a comprehensive plan to attract, train and retain healthcare professionals with the focus on increasing the number of Emirati work force; as well as on improving the healthcare sector preparedness during emergencies and disease outbreaks. The wellness and prevention priority will address public health initiatives with a focus on the Weqaya programme for UAE nationals, injury prevention, mother and child care, occupational health, combating and preventing communicable disease, updating vaccination programmes, reducing hereditary illnesses, and improving oral health in children.

According to Haad 2013 statistics, injuries are the second leading cause of death (19.6 per cent) and healthy life years lost in Abu Dhabi. Fatal injuries are caused primarily by road traffic accidents (62 per cent), followed by injuries due to falls and falling objects (11 per cent), and suicide (8 per cent). Occupational injuries and childhood injuries account for 18.4 per cent and 12.2 per cent of total injury deaths respectively.

Chronic diseases

The emirate has high rates of chronic diseases related to lifestyle, such as obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Cardiovascular disease accounted for 36.7 per cent of all deaths in 2013. Without major changes, these rates are set to increase further as the young population ages. Individuals thought to be at high risk of cardiovascular disease are being followed up. On cost-effectiveness, the goal was to ensure value for money and sustain healthcare spending. HAAD has set a number of initiatives to monitor utilisation of healthcare services, a plan to optimise spending on medical products, a system to assess health insurance premiums; and a network of medical laboratories to achieve savings.

According to the data provided by healthcare entities in 2013, the Abu Dhabi health insurance system covered 2.73 million people. There were 14.3 million clinical episodes in which 83.9 million clinical activities were performed.

On the last priority area, a major component of the healthcare sector strategy is healthcare informatics and e-health. HAAD is planning to create a health information platform to enable exchange of data among providers.

“Hopefully in the next five years we will see tangible improvements in the healthcare sector based on the outcomes of these initiatives,” said Professor Barakat.

Genetic diseases, mental health

Reducing genetic disease, personalised medicine programme and mental health are some of the important issues that will be addressed by Haad’s healthcare strategy. “In the causes of death, about two per cent of deaths were from congenital malformation at birth. Many of them are a result of close family marriages,” said Prof Barakat. Part of the initiatives will be to increase awareness on the risk of close family marriages.

“We will work with pre-gestational diagnosis to try and limit this, of children being born with severe malformation,” she added.

Haad is also looking at implementing a personalised medicine programme. “This is really the future of medicine where you can take a blood test from an individual, see what type of genetic profile they have and then perhaps tailor the management for the rest of this person’s life based on his/her genetic make-up,” Prof Barakat explained.

“Some genetic make-ups are predisposed to diabetes, some to cancer (and) other things that we can try to prevent. This is really the future of medicine and we are still on the exploratory phase. This is new.”

On mental health, Prof Barakat said there will be a programme to assess the current status of mental health treatment available in Abu Dhabi with the aim of reforming it so that it becomes more comprehensive and more robust. -olivia@khaleejtimes.com