Doctor's blood work awarded

Arab Health Innovation and Achievement Awards reward initiatives and programmes that have improved care across the region.

DUBAI // A doctor whose changes to how donor blood is distributed helped saved more lives has been honoured at the annual Arab Health Awards. Dr Akram al Hilali, a consultant haematopathologist at the Dubai Hospital, picked up the Laboratory Award at Wednesday's ceremony, one of the highlights of the Arab Health congress, which ended yesterday. "It is great for the team to have all their hard work recognised," said Dr Hilali, after receiving the award, one of the eight being presented.

Blood can be split into different components so that it can be used to treat a number of different patients, he said. Thanks to his work for the past 18 months, the Blood Donation Centre in Dubai now splits all the donated blood before it is distributed to hospitals. "Rarely a patient needs all the blood, so if they are given it, it is a waste," he said. "It is much more economical to only use the bits you need. I started education programmes to teach doctors about the importance of only requesting from the blood bank specific components. Now all the blood is split and it has transformed the transfusion process in Dubai. It has changed the mentality of doctors."

Dr al Hilali said the process was being used in other countries, and it made a big difference to the way blood is distributed, and in turn is saving more lives. The Arab Health Awards honours hospitals and doctors across the UAE. This year the congress, the second largest in the Middle East, attracted a record number of more than 50,000 professionals and business people from around the region. The awards were split into eight categories and reward initiatives and programmes at facilities across the region which have improved the quality of health care.

Tawam Hospital, in Al Ain, received two - the Surgery and IT awards, for programmes that have improved the quality of care they deliver. Dr Agmad Elsherif, the chief of thoracic surgery at Tawam Hospital, said the department had performed a number of surgeries last year, including some that had never been done in the Middle East. An example, he said, was the keyhole surgery the hospital carried out to remove the oesophagus. "We did this on three patients who had cancer. It is much better for the patient as they do not need to stay in hospital as long, and they do not need to travel abroad for treatment. This is the first time it has been done in the Middle East."

Brian De Francesca the chief operating officer at Tawam Hospital, said the IT award was in recognition of a project involving sophisticated equipment used by doctors on call all around Al Ain. "Our doctors and nurses visiting home patients are able to access their records using a tablet PC. This is very hi-tech stuff. They can access the records from anywhere in the world." The hospital has also introduced a scheme to help medical staff express their concerns anonymously. Mervat Mansour, a senior quality and training co-ordinator, set up a "dark room" in the hospital where staff can log any concerns or problems they have.

"We want to encourage the staff to report adverse events," Ms Mansour said. "It is based on a theory that to change behaviour you must change the environment. Staff can report any incidents that they might otherwise not want to talk about. We can then look at these" and try to find a way to sort out the problems, she said. Another winner was the department of cardiac sciences at Sheikh Khalifa Medical City in Abu Dhabi. The surgery team received the Emergency Medical Services award for performing more than 1,000 emergency angioplasty surgeries on heart attack patients over the past four years.

Dr Mazar Albustani, the deputy head of cardiology, said angioplasty could save more lives with fewer complications. "We are only one of a handful of centres in the Middle East who provide these services to the community," he said. The Ambulatory Health Care Services department at Seha, the medical service provider for Abu Dhabi, won the Quality Healthcare award for improving the overall health of chronic patients in Al Ain over the past five years. They have been educating doctors about how to better manage the conditions and helping patients understand more about their diseases, such as diabetes and hypertension. Latifa Baynouna, head of family medicine in ambulatory healthcare services at Seha, said patients' health records showed a great improvement in conditions such as high blood sugar.

The other winners this year include the Saudi German Hospital in Saudi Arabia, the education department at Sultan Bin Abdulaziz Humanitarian City, Saudi Arabia, and the King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Jeddah. "The awards has become an important aspect of the overall Arab Health event," said Simon Page, the director of the Life Science Division at IIR Middle East, the organisers of the Arab Health congress.

@Email:[e-mail]