The primary Health Care Corporation (PHCC) will open two wellness health centres next year with smart diabetes clinics, a top official revealed yesterday.
A Smart Diabetes Clinic at Al Wakra Health Centre was opened in January this year. This is an initiative of World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH) and implemented by the PHCC. The model has been found very successful as many people were screened for diabetes and many pre-diabetic cases were prevented from turning into diabetes.
“The Smart Diabetes Clinic model at Al Wakra Health Centre is a very unique feature and will be expanded to other health centres under PHCC in the coming years,” Dr Mariam Ali Abdulmalik, managing director of PHCC, told Gulf Times at a press conference to announce the details of WISH summit 2016.
“We plan to have nine more health centres by 2020 and we will open two wellness health centres in 2017 with the smart diabetes clinics. We plan to start the same facility soon at the Wellness Health Centres of Leabaib and Rawadat Al Khail that were opened recently, taking the total number of health centres with smart diabetes clinic to five,” she explained.
“These five health centres will provide the services initially. All the other health centres will have health checkup facility and we will adopt the smart diabetes clinic model at all the health centres during the checkup, leading to early detection of not only diabetes but other diseases too as we are expanding further. All the detected cases are referred to health educators for further treatment and guidance.”
Egbert Schillings, CEO, WISH, said that the smart diabetes clinic was an initiative of WISH to impact local healthcare.
“We formed a WISH implementation task force in 2014. The smart diabetes clinic is the outcome of this collective effort and great leadership,” recalled Schillings.
The Al Wakra Smart diabetes clinic invited about 9,800 people from Al Wakrah area for diabetes screening. “A total of 1,580 people were screened for diabetes at the centre. Out of that, 44 patients were identified diabetic and 32 as pre-diabetic,” said Dr Abdulmalik.
“This is a clear example of prevention of diseases which we plan to expand to other health centres in the coming years,” she added.
HMC
