Reaaya Magazine - Qatar

The State of Qatar took its first steps in establishing a primary health care system and started to provide healthcare services through a range of clinics as early as 1954. In 1978 the Ministry of Health developed a comprehensive scheme for building a primary health care system which was submitted to the Council of Ministers and the scheme included the launching of primary health care services through 9 health centers, covering different parts of the country, and capable of providing basic and essential health and medical services (preventive and curative). Since then, all effort has been spent to enhance health care standards. Overtime, services were planned with the objective of being the first health defense line, and it continued to improve both in terms of quantity and quality.

Currently, the Primary Health Care Corporation is operating through 21 primary health care centers distributed into three regions, namely Central, Western, and Northern. Thirteen of these centers are located in Doha city, while the rest of centers are located in populated areas in all parts of the country in order to provide a wide variety of different types of health care services that depend on the location and needs of each area throughout a set of objectives which focuses on keeping the health of population, and prevention from diseases, in addition to patient Diagnose and treatment, and the provision of a long-term and constant support to patients and their families from infants to elderly, children, adults, married couples, and mothers.

A large number of health centers provide specialty services to the community aiming to enhance self care model as well as healthy life style manner.

Due to the importance of health care services provided through health centers, and in order to achieve the National Health Strategy objectives which emphasizes that the primary health care is the base for health system in the country, there is full understanding reflected clearly by H.H. Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa AL Thani, Emir of the State of Qatar, who has issued on 20th February 2012 the Emiri decree No. (15) on the Establishment of the Primary Health Care Corporation considering it as an independent corporation with its own independent budget.