Qatar emerges as the Gulf's healthcare pathfinder

Throughout MEED’s Arabian Public Health Forum 2011, Qatar was referred to as the GCC country that is doing the most to improve its public health services with the state’s quiet reforms held up as the model to follow in the region.

Qatar’s public health challenges are equal to those of its neighbours – more than 70 per cent of deaths are caused by non-communicable diseases, such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and road traffic accidents, which are largely preventable and mostly the result of the adoption of Western-style sedentary lifestyles.

But rather than shift the burden of healthcare delivery onto the private sector as seen elsewhere in the GCC, Qatar has embarked on a major reform of its public healthcare system.

It has drawn up a five-year National Health Strategy centred on primary care, which focuses on the early detection of ill health. The existing system is a hospital-based model that reacts to acute heal34th problems rather than monitoring and preventing diseases.

The 2011-16 strategy outlines 35 projects to improve public health services - these range from anti-smoking initiatives to developing mental health services and recruitment of health professionals.

The National Health Strategy aligns with the wider vision of Qatar’s Vision 2030, which aims to transform the country into a knowledge-based society. That vision pinpoints humans as Qatar’s greatest natural resource alongside hydrocarbons. With its healthcare reforms Qatar is demonstrating that it sees investment in health as an investment in the economy.

Other regional governments want private entities take on the bulk of healthcare provision and have made developing the sector through compulsory health insurance a priority ahead of improving public services.

But this brings with it an inevitable conflict of interest between profit-making and quality of care. Over prescription and intervention are common complaints. Qatar has instead chosen to raise public standards for private providers to emulate. It is an approach other governments would to do well to emulate.