The recent opening of health and wellness centres in different parts of Qatar by the Primary Health Care Corporation (PHCC) has provided a further boost to efforts taken to prevent lifestyle diseases through developing healthy habits, a healthcare official has stressed.
“The wellness services are designed to enable people to follow a good and healthy lifestyle as well as achieve a balance between their physical and mental health,” PHCC managing director Dr Mariam Abdulmalik said.
She made the observation while speaking during the opening of the Umm Salal Wellness and Health Centre last week.
“These services will support the community to enjoy a healthy life through the provision of wellness services and preventive action by a team of specialists that includes doctors, nurses and dietitians, among others,” Dr Abdulmalik noted.
Recent statistics show that almost 17% of Qatar’s adult population suffers from diabetes and the level of obesity is also high. These trends point to the need for immediate measures to contain such problems, according to experts, and the new PHCC facilities are likely to play a key role in this. In addition, PHCC has set up a smart diabetes clinic at Al Wakrah Health Centre to fight the menace of diabetes.
PHCC recently opened a couple of wellness and health centres in the country. While the Rawdat Al Khail centre was opened early this month, the one at Umm Salal was inaugurated a few days ago. Earlier, a wellness and health centre was opened at Leabaib in December 2015.
All three centres provide a number of facilities that can help patients and visitors lead a healthy lifestyle. They are “Type A” centres that provide the usual medical facilities as well as other services that are not available in most of the other health centres.
The wellness services include gym, multi-depth swimming pool, massage, sauna and steam as well physiotherapy services. All of these are provided separately for males and females.
The centres provide advanced equipment for physical activities. Visitors can make use of these facilities on the advice of the  physician concerned or other medical staff. In addition, the wellness centres have dietitians to instruct visitors on their food habits. This will help many of them to set right their dietary habits, it is believed.
Meanwhile, the smart diabetes clinic at Al Wakrah Health Centre is another initiative that PHCC plans to replicate in these wellness centres to fight diabetes. Known as the “Smart Clinic” and started in collaboration with healthcare providers in the State, it is designed to improve the health and well-being of people through the delivery of high-quality, efficient care for those who suffer from, or are at risk of, developing diabetes.
Using a combination of data analytics and a risk-based screening, it identifies those with known diabetes risk factors and invites these high-risk patients to the “Smart Clinic” for voluntary screening.
By April this year, more than 3,000 people had been invited at the “Smart Clinic” for screening and nearly 1,000 tested for diabetes. Of them, 123 patients were identified as pre-diabetic and 20 diagnosed with the disease.