H E Dr Hanan Mohamed Al Kuwari
This month, Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) is celebrating its 40th anniversary, marking four decades of delivering safe, effective, and compassionate care to Qatar’s population since having been established by Amiri decree in 1979.
“Under the direction of Qatar’s visionary leaders, we are proud to have delivered a wide range of health care services to millions of people throughout the past 40 years,” said H E Dr Hanan Mohamed Al Kuwari, Minister of Public Health.
“I am truly proud of Hamad’s journey and its transformation, not only in terms of capacity but quality as well. Hamad is now a health care provider that ranks alongside the world’s best and it is the tens of thousands of dedicated staff who have worked at Hamad over the past 40 years who have driven this success,” she added.
HMC has expanded its capacity with the opening of many new hospitals throughout the past four decades and today operates 12 hospitals across Qatar. Additionally, the number of patients being cared for by its clinical teams has grown at an exponential pace.
Ali Al Janahi, HMC’s Acting Assistant Managing Director, said how the rate and scale of HMC’s transformation is unmatched around the world.
“If I look back at HMC as a health care provider when I first joined 40 years ago, it is unrecognizable today. Qatar’s population, when HMC was established in 1979, was just 225,000, yet today Qatar is home to more than 2.8 million people. This rapid population growth has driven the expansion of HMC and it is hard to think of another health care provider anywhere in the world that has undergone this scale of transformation,” said Al Janahi.
“It is remarkable to think about how much HMC has changed since the early years. In the 1980s health care systems and technology were very basic compared to today. For example, the ambulances used in those early years were ordinary suburban cars without any specialist equipment, operated with only a driver and technician, if available. And most of our processes and patient records were carried out using paper-based files. Today we have some of the most sophisticated and advanced systems and technology available in the world, right across our network,” said Al Janahi.
Despite treating greater numbers of patients each year for the past four decades, HMC has worked hard to not only meet this increasing demand but to also advance the quality of care it delivers to patients in all areas of service.
