Category: Medical

ABU DHABI, The Abu Dhabi Public Health Centre (ADPHC) has issued the Abu Dhabi Public and Preventive Health System to serve as a cornerstone of the centre’s vision toward a healthy and safe society.

The decree defines the critical responsibilities of Abu Dhabi’s entities in managing various aspects of public and preventive health and encompassing eight pillars, such as communicable diseases, noncommunicable diseases, occupational health and safety, environmental health, community health, information and research, awareness programmes, and public health emergencies and crises.

In collaboration with the Department of Health – Abu Dhabi (DoH), the ADPHC will work on preparing and developing the systems, policies, circulars, and initiatives to meet the requirements of the Abu Dhabi Public and Preventive Health System.

Abdulla Bin Mohamed Al Hamed, Chairman of the Department of Health – Abu Dhabi, said, “As a result of our leadership’s wise directives that have placed the safety and wellbeing of the community at the forefront, since the establishment of Abu Public Health Centre, we move towards strengthening Abu Dhabi’s position as a regional and global leader in healthcare with initiatives such as the Abu Dhabi Public and Preventive Health System.

“Following the directives of the Abu Dhabi Government, the Abu Dhabi Public and Preventive Health System was issued to serve as a strategic addition to the emirate’s public health landscape. Public and preventive health is a critical element of the DoH’s responsibilities and a complementary component of the curative health offerings across healthcare facilities.

“By providing a regulatory framework for all public health activities in the emirate, the system will support the ADPHC’s initiatives towards a healthy and safe society. It has been prepared in line with international best practices and designed to be resilient, keeping pace with changes in the healthcare sector. The system reflects our wise leadership’s commitment to the health and safety of everyone living in the UAE. It is another step to strengthen public and preventative health, as we continue reinforcing Abu Dhabi’s position as a global leader in healthcare.”

Matar Saeed Al Nuaimi, Director-General of Abu Dhabi Public Health Centre, said, “The new system follows the wise decision by our leadership to establish the ADPHC in 2019. The Abu Dhabi Public and Preventive Health System is a document that sets the regulatory framework for all public health activities in the emirate. Implementing the Public and Preventive Health System at the emirate level is a unique and distinct experience in the region. It is a key step that supports our development efforts while also creating a positive impact on the public health standards in Abu Dhabi.”

Al Nuaimi added, “The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the capabilities of the UAE and its flexibility in implementing exceptional public health and preventative health measures. In 2022, we are focusing on leveraging this success to move forward faster to achieve the aspirations of our leadership and residents of the emirate. We aim to contribute to the creation of a healthy and aware society across the entire Abu Dhabi. The Abu Dhabi Public and Preventive Health System will clarify the obligations and guidelines for government and private agencies, health sector institutions and community members.

“This, in turn, will improve the level of public health in the community and will reflect positively on many local indicators that the government aspires to achieve in the coming years while raising the country’s public health ranking at the global level.”

The system’s Communicable Diseases chapter outlines the requirements for managing infectious diseases by addressing aspects related to monitoring, investigation, surveillance, and vaccinations necessary for preventing and controlling the outbreak of infectious diseases. The COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced the importance of circulating information about contagious diseases on a domestic and global level.

Similarly, the chapter on Noncommunicable Diseases focuses on identifying and updating lists of diseases and priorities for dealing with them based on currently available data and statistics, domestically and globally.

The system also addresses Occupational Health and Safety by defining the responsibilities of employers and workers in public and private sectors, emphasising the need to assess and reduce the risks associated with various workplace activities and promoting a culture of occupational health and safety. It also contributes to defining standards and requirements needed to protect the health of workers and communities from occupational and environmental risks through assessing potential sources of environmental pollution.

The Community Health chapter covers all family and school health all aspects, particularly emphasising the importance of medical and preventive examinations for expecting mothers and newborns. The chapter also highlights the importance of educating community members on all matters affecting their health.

In line with the ADPHC’s commitment to investing in innovation and smart data and its applications, the system allocates an entire chapter to identifying and categorising research and data management activities related to public and preventive health. Through that, it stresses the importance of developing and implementing education and awareness programmes, unifying messages and priorities in this field and preparing for emergencies such as pandemics and epidemics.

The Abu Dhabi Public Health System has been launched to define policies and procedures that will maintain and promote public health, ensure the health and safety of workers and employees in the emirate, and improve Abu Dhabi’s global public health ranking.

Source: Emirates News Agency

ABU DHABI, The Ministry of Health and Prevention (MoHAP) announced that it conducted 346,725 additional COVID-19 tests over the past 24 hours, using state-of-the-art medical testing equipment.

In a statement on Tuesday, the Ministry stressed its aim to continue expanding the scope of testing nationwide to facilitate the early detection of coronavirus cases and carry out the necessary treatment. As part of its intensified testing campaign, MoHAP announced 512 new coronavirus cases, bringing the total number of recorded cases in the UAE to 1,014,899.

According to the Ministry, the infected individuals are from various nationalities, are in a stable condition, and receiving the necessary care.

The Ministry added that no COVID-19-related deaths have been recorded in the past 24 hours, leaving the death toll unchanged at 2,341.

MoHAP also noted that an additional 536 individuals had fully recovered from COVID-19, bringing the total number of recoveries to 993,740.

Source: Emirates News Agency

ABU DHABI, The Ministry of Health and Prevention (MoHAP) announced that it conducted 229,236 additional COVID-19 tests over the past 24 hours, using state-of-the-art medical testing equipment.

In a statement on Monday, the Ministry stressed its aim to continue expanding the scope of testing nationwide to facilitate the early detection of coronavirus cases and carry out the necessary treatment. As part of its intensified testing campaign, MoHAP announced 522 new coronavirus cases, bringing the total number of recorded cases in the UAE to 1,014,387.

According to the Ministry, the infected individuals are from various nationalities, are in a stable condition, and receiving the necessary care.

The Ministry added that no COVID-19-related deaths have been recorded in the past 24 hours, leaving the death toll unchanged at 2,341.

MoHAP also noted that an additional 539 individuals had fully recovered from COVID-19, bringing the total number of recoveries to 993,204.

Source: Emirates News Agency

In estimating the global burden of cancer, adolescents and young adults are often overlooked, despite being a distinct subgroup with unique epidemiology, clinical-care needs and societal impact. Because of this, comprehensive estimates of the global cancer burden in adolescents and young adults are lacking.

“Adolescents and young adults develop cancers commonly found and treated in the pediatric population, as well as the more common carcinomas seen in adults,” said Dr. Juan Acuna, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at Khalifa University. “Some cancers are more prevalent in this age group than in younger or older individuals, and from a health care-delivery perspective, adolescent and young-adult patients with cancer might struggle to find care that is optimal for both their cancer type and their age-related treatment needs.”

Additionally, this age group is more likely to face social and financial challenges that could result in inequities in access to appropriate care, timely diagnosis, and treatment. They are also not a targeted group for cancer-control programs and research development, despite their age group not seeing the same improvements in cancer survival as younger and older cohorts. Consideration of more comprehensive disease-burden metrics is especially relevant for this group as their disease burden might put a strain on their evolving careers and families.

This subgroup refers to people aged 15 to 39, as the definitions and cutoffs of the age range for adolescents and young adults vary. This age group is generally described as being in the transition between childhood and adulthood, making it a large subpopulation that needs representation in global studies.

Adolescents and young adults are often grouped with adult patients in clinical care and clinical trials, meaning comprehensive assessments of the cancer burden and epidemiological patterns in this age group are largely unknown or underreported. Previous studies have reported on global cancer incidence and mortality patterns in this group. However,the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries and Risk Factors Study (GBD) is the only global disease-burden-estimation framework that evaluates disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) for cancer as a metric to complement incidence and mortality data.

“DALYs are a key measure of disease burden that include both fatal and non-fatal impacts of disease and are used in the development of national and global health policy,” Dr. Acuna explained. “They represent an important comprehensive assessment of the burden of cancer in this distinctive population, adding to existing estimates of disease burden with more classic measures. They are crucial to informing cancer-control strategies that address health disparities and inequities in adolescents and young adults.”

The study found that there were an estimated 1.19 million incident cancer cases and 396,000 deaths due to cancer among individuals aged 15-39. Breast cancer, brain cancer, colon and rectum cancer, and stomach cancer were the four greatest contributors to the DALY burden globally for both sexes combined. However, if leukemias were considered as a single group, rather than as individual leukemia subtypes, they would be the largest category contributing to the global cancer DALY burden.

The results also show that the greatest burden of cancer in adolescents and young adults was concentrated in parts of Asia, southern sub-Saharan Africa, and South America. This geographical pattern was similar to that of childhood cancers. Women had a higher overall incidence of cancer than men globally in 2019 but overall mortality rates were similar.

In 2019, deaths due to cancer in the adolescent and young adult population were lower than those estimated for transport injuries and cardiovascular and circulatory diseases, but higher than those estimated for HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted infections, respiratory infections and tuberculosis, and unintentional injuries.

“The global burden of cancer contributed more DALYs to the global disease burden than some high-profile communicable diseases such as HIV/AIDS,” Dr. Acuna said. “This comparison had not previously been documented, and it highlights that cancer is an important contributor to premature death and the disease burden in adolescents and young adults, even when compared to diseases that are the focus of more active global funding, research and advocacy efforts. Our findings underscore the need to develop a global strategy to address the cancer burden in this population.”

Because of the substantial burden of adolescent and young-adult cancers globally, there needs to be broader attention on the unique determinants driving cancer outcomes in this age range, the researchers concluded. The World Health Assembly in 2017 noted that patients in this population often experience delays and difficulties in assessing care, and the psychosocial challenges they face require resources and skills that are often not available to cancer-treatment teams.

“The age range for adolescents and young adults encompasses their formative years in life and spans the time from completing education to possibly starting a career and raising children, and potentially contributing to society more broadly,” Dr. Acuna explained. “A cancer diagnosis during these years can have considerable impact on their future life trajectory through major stressors, including feelings of isolation, anxiety and depression, concerns about infertility, discontinuing school or work, and financial hardship. Efforts to mitigate these issues have been successful but they’ve largely been limited to high-income countries. These initiatives need to be expanded globally, particularly to those countries which carry a disproportionate burden of adolescent and young adult cancer DALYs.”

To improve outcomes in this unique population, a new approach to global cancer control is required, the researchers said. Efforts to comprehensively estimate the global burden of cancer in adolescents and young adults, like this study, are a crucial first step. Increased awareness of the burden of cancer in this population could lead to targeted interventions for improved outcomes.

Source: Khalifa University

ABU DHABI, The Ministry of Health and Prevention (MoHAP) has announced it will organise the First Scientific Conference on Health and Medical Research in the UAE on 5th and 6th December, 2022, to develop national capacities in health and medical research, create a suitable framework for scientific research and promote the skills and competencies of national cadres.

All academics and researchers working for academic institutions, and public and private healthcare providers in the UAE are invited to the conference and to submit their research papers on various medical subjects.

The ministry said that researchers should focus on proposed topics and themes that include cancer innovative therapies, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and obesity, genetics, infectious diseases, neurosciences and mental health, women and child health, environmental diseases, and artificial intelligence in healthcare.

Dr. Amin Hussein Al Amiri, Assistant Under-Secretary for the Health Regulation Sector, MoHAP, stressed that organising the conference comes in line with the ministry’s ongoing efforts to strengthen the country’s medical capabilities and create a scientific platform to support research, foster innovations, and fund investments in medical technology.

“We are looking forward to producing innovative research that enriches the medical landscape in the UAE and to creating a supportive environment for national competencies who can come up with new and revolutionary treatments for diseases and patients. We are determined to play a fundamental role in achieving the objectives of the UAE Centennial Plan and establishing a sustainable health system,” Al Amiri said.

Khalil Qayed, Training and Development Consultant at The National Centre for Health Research (NCHR), MoHAP, said, “Through the conference, we hope to keep abreast of the newest breakthroughs in medical, scientific research and adopt the finest global methods to promote scientific research strategies.”

He clarified the terms and conditions for submitting research, which include that the summary should not be more than 300 words; it should not have been published earlier, or one with which the researcher has participated in a previous conference. He also added that the deadline for submitting research is 15th September, 2022, and the approval or rejection would be decided on 15th October, 2022.

Those interested in participating can register for the conference for free by submitting a synopsis of their study to NCHR@mohap.gov.ae.

Source: Emirates News Agency