Minister opens first Qatar Public Health Conference

HE the Minister of Public Health Dr Hanan Mohamed al-Kuwari inaugurated the first Qatar Public Health Conference yesterday.The conference has been organised by the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) in collaboration with the World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH). The two-day conference is being held under the theme ‘10 Years of Public Health: Looking back, moving forward’, with the participation of a number of dignitaries, officials and national and international experts.The minister highlighted a number of outstanding achievements in public health, including improvements in reproductive health, maternal, neonatal and child health, in addition to reducing the number of premature deaths due to non-communicable diseases, reducing mortality and traffic injuries significantly, and enhancing the control of infectious diseases. She pointed out that the rate of coverage of all vaccines under the National Vaccination Programme has reached over 95% and, according to the Global Audit Tobacco Survey data, there has been a decrease of about 40% in young smokers aged 13-15 years between 2004 and 2018 in Qatar.“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 10 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,” said HE Dr al-Kuwari.The conference is being attended by more than 50 local, regional and international speakers from medical and academic institutions, as well as lead public health institutions from around the world with over 500 participants. The conference is scheduled to be biennial discussing public health services, including prevention, protection, health promotion, communicable diseases, non-communicable diseases, food safety and environmental health. The conference showcases some 60 research abstracts from various health sector partners in Qatar to build effective and long-term strategic partnerships.HE Dr al-Kuwari affirmed that public health issues are of highest priority and in 2017 a specialised public health strategy was launched under the umbrella of the National Health Strategy. It aims to establish a comprehensive and integrated system which can provide effective solutions for the current and future challenges and ensure health promotion and wellness for the population of Qatar.Many key public health accomplishments over the last decade are to be presented during the conference, with the vision of cooperating with all partners to address the public health challenges in the next decade.In the opening speech, Sheikh Dr Mohamed al-Thani, director of the Public Health Department at the MoPH, said: “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.”The conference features a number of panel discussions, workshops, presentations and debates, as well as an exhibition of posters with the participation of various stakeholders in the country.A series of presentations are given at the conference such as ‘Preparations for mass gatherings in Qatar’, ‘Presenting results of the National Child Oral Health Survey’, ‘Qatar Biobank and Qatar Genome Project: A major step towards the implementation of personalised healthcare’, ‘Automated insulin delivery in type 1 diabetes in Qatar: Achieving world-class results’ and ‘Occupational safety and health in Qatar: From craft and manual workers’ healthcare service provision to the development of a national policy’.