Middle East Health eNews

Men load medicine from a WHO warehouse in Islamabad. -- © WHO/Syed Haider

Gulf states have stepped up to the plate in a major effort to provide much need aid to flood-ravaged Pakistan.

The latest initiatives – according to an IRIN News report on 26 August is that Saudi Arabia has sent 130 rescue workers to Pakistan with relief equipment including motorboats, vehicles and generators.

Saudi King Abdulalh has also ordered the dispatch of two 200-bed field hospitals. Each hospital has an operation room, laboratory, pharmacy, intensive care unit and X-ray room.

The UAE Red Crescent is sending medics to Pakistan and launching a US$100,000 vaccination programme to protect young women and children from disease.

The UAE Red Crescent has been running a telethon in the and as of yesterday had raised Dh75 million (about $20.5million). The telethon continues today and tomorrow.

According to WAM news agency, the UAE has also sent 50,000 blankets, 12,000 tents, 220,000 food packets, 6,000 mineral water bottles, food utensils, 227 tons of dates and medicines.

WAM says two teams of UAE doctors are working in Peshawar and Jacobabad and are vaccinating 6,000 women and children in coordination with UNICEF.

The UAE Air Force has also sent a number of Chinook helicopters to assist the Pakistani army with relief efforts.

The Qatar Charity, in collaboration with the UN World Food Programme, has distributed $1.92 million worth of food parcels to affected families since mid-August. The charity has set up an “air bridge” to fly in relief to Pakistan in cooperation with Qatar Airways. It also said it would airlift 80 tons of emergency relief items worth $604,229.

IRIN reports that the Qatar Red Crescent Society distributed aid to 3,200 families in the first stage of its relief operations.

Kuwait has said it will double aid to Pakistan to $10 million.

Bahrain is to send urgent humanitarian aid worth $2.6 million, according to Bahrain News Agency.

Tawam Hospital, in Al Ain, in affiliation with Johns Hopkins Medicine, is the first hospital in the UAE to introduce the pioneering Neurally Adjusted Ventilatory Assist (NAVA) system to its Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).

NAVA is a new mode of assisted mechanical ventilation that enables the brain of the patient, in this case a premature baby, to control the mechanical ventilator. NAVA technology uses electrical diaphragmatic activity (EDA) to adjust ventilator support according to a patient’s needs by reading the electrical signal transmitted from the brain to the diaphragm. By synchronising the ventilator and diaphragm movement patient discomfort is minimised as is the need for sedatives.

EDA is considered to be “the new vital sign” in critical care medicine as it provides a unique means for physicians to diagnose and monitor various types of breathing disorders encountered in the intensive care unit.

NAVA technology is provided by MAQUET.

The American Hospital Dubai (AHD) has begun using its new In-patient Bed Tower, with the opening of the first of the facilities to be located there. The 7-storey, 240 patient bed facility is now home to the newly designed and refurbished Total Joint Replacement Regional Center of Excellence on the fifth floor.

A new 20-bed maternity unit (labour and delivery) will open shortly, with its eight delivery suites, two c-section rooms, 10-bed neonatal ICU (intensive care unit) and a well-baby nursery. AHD says the new facility will be fully occupied and operational before the end of 2010.

The In-patient Bed Tower is the latest in a series of developments being undertaken by the hospital and follows the opening of a new outpatient clinic building, which resulted in a doubling of the medical staff at the hospital.

The JCI-accredited hospital is undergoing several other renovation projects including seven new Emergency Department treatment exam rooms which will constitute a new ‘Urgent Care Service’.