The opening session yesterday was attended by Dr Sheikh Mohamed bin Hamad al-Thani, director of Public Health at MoPH, French ambassador Eric Chevallier, Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, head of the Outbreak Investigation Task Force at IP, Dr Mohamed Mohamed al-Hajri, director of emergency preparedness and response department, MoPH as well as a number of officials from MoPH and other healthcare organisations.
About 30 healthcare workers including physicians, nurses, laboratory technicians and others are attending the course from different departments within the MoPH, Hamad Medical Corporation, Primary Health Care Corporation, Ministry of Municipality and Environment and Qatar Petroleum. The participants will be part of the National Rapid Response Team, which augments the joint response to any infectious disease outbreaks that may occur.
“We signed a five-year agreement with Institut Pasteur in January this year for research, training and education. Representatives from Qatar Foundation, Qatar University and Hamad Medical Corporation were also part of the discussions in finalising the agreement.We hope that the training programme will lead to more professionalism among the healthcare staff and pave the way for a healthier population,” said Sheikh Mohamed at the inaugural session of the training programme.
Ambassador Chevallier described the agreement between Qatar and Institut Pasteur as "a perfect example of international co-operation and partnership. This is the first step of a long journey. The partnership will benefit the healthcare professionals in the country in a big way.”
According to Dr al-Hajri, Qatar would take the opportunity to utilise the expertise of a renowned organisation such as Institut Pasteur, renowed for expertise in several areas in healthcare.
“Qatar is the first country in the region to conduct such a training programme with IP. We look for transfer of technology and expertise as well as knowledge sharing during the period of the agreement through various programmes. IP also has also several new programmes in chronic diseases such as diabetes which will be of great help to Qatar. The present training programme has 10 steps in the module.”
