A study on the health of the migrant workers, being conducted by the Centre for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Qatar, aims to expose the false media campaign by some section of the Western media in connection with FIFA World Cup 2022.
“We want to publish the findings of the study by April next year. We hope the study will clear a lot of misconceptions propagated by some of the media outlets in the West. We don’t want to do what the Guardian newspaper does, but we want to bring out the real picture with clear facts. Our study involves several academic institutions such as Weill Cornell and the Qatar Red Crescent Society among others,” Dr Mehran Kamrava, director of CIRS told Gulf Times.
CIRS has launched the study looking at the health of the migrant workers in collaboration with Qatar Foundation and Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy. Dr Kamrava maintains that this study will expose the myths and misinformation propagated by some Western media against Qatar about the health of the migrant workers engaged in the construction of the infrastructure for 2022 FIFA World Cup.
“Once we have the report, we want to hand it over to the policy makers. This is a different study and it involves a number of stakeholders. Early findings suggest that the propaganda by some Western media is totally wrong. We want to present the facts that will debunk some of the misconceptions perpetuated by these Western media against Qatar.” explained Dr Kamrava.
“We want to let the facts speak for themselves. These facts are collected through scientific study involving multiple stakeholders. We have social scientists, physicians and medical professionals among others in the research team,” he noted.
“So, we have started studying the healthcare aspects of the migrant workers in a systematic way, looking at some of the best practices for extreme climatic conditions as well as the existing practices. We are also looking at nutrition as well as the kinds of nutritional intake available for the workers. As they come from different dietary cultures, the diet of the people also differ from country to country. We are also studying on issues like smoking and other health related issues,” he said.
According to Dr Kamrava, the study will take several more months and it could be out by April next year. “We want to publish it well ahead of the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Generally our studies take around 18-24 months but this is a special issue and will be completed in 12 months.
“A couple of years ago, we launched a research project on health and healthcare policy in the Gulf. Through this study, we discovered that there was very little information about pharma and pharmaceutical companies in the GCC. We also discovered that there was lot of variation in the medical treatment as people come from a number of countries following different medical practices,” he added.
