Qatar’s Public Works Authority (Ashghal) is floating a new tender for the construction of a mass casualty trauma hospital in the north of Doha. The project is part of a new “medical city” to be built on a site in Duhail, next to Qatar University.
The 1,100 bed hospital is slated for completion in 2022, one year later than initially scheduled, according to the tender published in local newspapers today.
It will be a trauma level 1 unit – a complete trauma care system that will be open 24 hours a day and staffed by general and specialist surgeons.
The project is being jointly developed by the Supreme Council of Health (SCH) and Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC).
Neither group was immediately available for comment, and Ashghal declined to provide any more information to Doha News about the project.
The public works authority is currently drawing up a short-list of companies who will be invited to tender for “project and construction management consultancy services” to manage the build.
Construction would begin in early 2015.
Current trauma facilities
Trauma cases are currently dealt with at Hamad General Hospital in central Doha, which has specialists in trauma, emergency medicine and critical care, among other disciplines.
The hospital’s trauma intensive care unit looks after around 45 adult patients a month, with injuries including multiple trauma, trauma to the chest, abdomen, multiple fractures, and head and spinal injuries.
One of the most frequent causes of trauma injuries in Qatar is road traffic accidents. According to the summary of a report issued last month by Qatar University’s Road Safety Studies Center, Qatar had more than one million traffic accidents in the six years from  2007 to 2012 – 1,289 of them fatal.
In total, the accidents have cost Qatar QR17.6 billion, with Qatar spending approximately 2.7 percent of its GDP each year on traffic accidents.
New medical facilities planned
According to the SCH’s most recently-published annual report in 2012, 11 new hospitals and medical research facilities are expected to be built in Qatar by 2022.
These include three hospitals dedicated to single, male laborers – in Mesaieed, Ras Laffan and Doha’s industrial area – which specialize in trauma and injury, occupational health and physiotherapy.
They are to be operated by private providers and slated to open next year.
Other new facilities include a New Women’s Hospital; an ambulatory and minimally-invasive surgery hospital; a communicable diseases hospital; a neuroscience institute; and a new cancer hospital.
There are also plans underway for two new medical commission centers and 18 new primary health care centers. The pediatric urgent care center at Al Saad is also scheduled for redevelopment. Plans for the 10,000sqm plot are in the design phase.
The new facilities are being built to provide sufficient healthcare for Qatar’s rapidly expanding population – now in excess of 2.1million.
Figures released last week by the Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics (MDPS), showed that in 2012 that there were 25.3 doctors per 10,000 people in Qatar – a significant change from 2010, when there were 34.9 doctors per 10,000 people.
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