New hospital to open within a year

Sharjah: The largest maternity hospital in the emirate is expected to be completed within the next year, a senior official said on Sunday.

The 200-bed hospital will include a gynaecology unit, a full-fledged open heart surgery unit, in addition to an obstetrics and a paediatric department.

"All cases of obstetrics, gynaecology and heart patients will be referred there by the end of 2009," said Dr Ameen Al Amiri, Assistant Undersecretary at the Ministry of Health, and Chairman of the Board of Directors at Al Qasimi Hospital.

The new hospital, on the same premises as Al Qasimi Hospital, was established as a result of the allocation of Dh350 million by His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, who approved the expansion works at the hospital.

The announcement was made yesterday at an event where Al Qasimi Hospital remembered preterm babies, weighing less than one kilogram and born at between five and eight months.

"The mortality rate of preterm babies at Al Qasimi Hospital was 3.9 per cent in 2007 and we aim to reduce that number to 2 per cent in the next three to four years," said Al Amiri.

From 2000 to 2007, the mortality rate was 14 out of 3,539 live births.

The neonatal mortality rate in 2007 in the Gulf countries, including the UAE, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Oman, was between 5 and 6 per cent, while the rate in Bahrain was 11 per cent and in Saudi Arabia 12 per cent, according to Dr Hakam Yaseen, Senior Consultant Neonatologist, and Head of the Paediatric Department at Al Qasimi Hospital.