Qatar - Walk In Clinic being shifted to Mamoura

[Snowy Owl]

Walk In Clinic being shifted to Mamoura
http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.aspx?cu_no=2&item_no=107701&version=1&template_id=36&parent_id=16
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AFTER almost four years of written complaints by the Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC)-run Walk In Clinic?s doctors about the "terrible situation" at the health centre, the government has finally paid heed and decided to shift the clinic to a bigger premises with "improved facilities".

Currently situated behind the Doha Petrol Station in the Doha Jadeed area, the clinic, the only one out of the 23 health centres run by HMC that offers medicare to single men in Qatar, will be shifted to Mamoura, where the government has bought four big villas for the purpose, "within the next 10 days," sources said.

The move is set to bring relief to hundreds of patients that throng the Walk In Clinic every day with barely any place for them to sit inside the medical centre?s waiting room, as well as the handful of the clinic?s doctors, who don?t think twice before comparing their workplace with Iraq?s Abu Ghraib prison.

"We call it the Abu Ghraib Clinic," one of the eight doctors at the clinic says requesting anonymity. "Look at the place. There is no place to sit for the patients, they are sweating, there are no doctors. How can you call this a place for medicare?"

Shivering with high fever, Shaukat Ali Rehman, a 46-year-old construction worker, stands in a corner of the Walk In Clinic?s waiting room, crammed amidst hundreds of other patients waiting for their turn to see a doctor. It?s 8 in the morning.

"I came and stood in the line outside the clinic at 5am," the Bangladeshi says. "There were already 30 people standing there before me."

The doors to the clinic open at 7am. And as early as 4.30 in the morning there is a serpentine queue outside the health centre with ill men hoping for their turn to come soon after the doors open so they can go to work.

"My employer refused to give me leave even though I am sick," Rehman says. "He said he would cut my salary if I didn?t show up in time for my shift." Rehman?s 8 o?clock shift has already begun, but there are still 16 people waiting before him as the waiting room gets more and more crowded with patients with each passing minute.

As scores of men continue to pour in, with just about 50 plastic chairs placed horizontally in the middle of the room, there?s barely enough space to stand leave aside a place for the patients to sit while they wait.

The ward boys, dressed in white, are running helter skelter from one room to the other trying to cater to the patients? needs. The air-conditioners are working, but they?re hardly effective in the tiny crowded room as waiting patients fan themselves with their handkerchiefs and prescription files.

In the dental chair, there is a big hole, which, like everyday, the wardboys are trying to fill up with sponge so that patients don?t sink in when they sit.

The doctors don?t smile at patients, they barely reply to a hello. They have neither the time nor the energy for such niceties. A patient goes in, and he?s out in two minutes with the doctor?s prescription. And the queue at the pharmacy keeps getting longer and longer.

A "minimum of 800" patients visit the clinic every day. The total number of doctors, however, is just eight, with "each doctor seeing at least 100 to 150 patients" a day.

The doctor admits that because they are "so overworked and in a hurry to treat waiting patients", they might come across as rude and uncaring.
"But we do care. Several times we treat patients, who we?re supposed to send to HMC, free of cost because we don?t want them to go through the trouble. I wish we could show in other ways we care," the doctor says.

The HMC-run clinic, which operates from 7am to 2pm and then 4pm to 7pm, is about 13 years old, and the only one in the country, other than HMC itself, which provides medicare for bachelors living in Qatar. There are a total of "23 government-run health centres" in the country, 21 of which are "only for families", while one is meant solely "for school students."

The patient?s health card or ID is run through the computer to find out if his wife is in Qatar with him, or if he indeed is living a bachelor?s life in the country, regardless of whether he is married back home or not.

The imbalance in the demand and supply at the out-going health centre has been such that at 9am almost everyday, the clinic must close the card-distributing counter and request the patients to return in the evening, else there would be an "unmanageable overflow".

It?s 10.30am and Rehman has just managed to buy his medicines prescribed by the doctor for viral fever from the clinic?s pharmacy. He says he isn?t feeling well at all as he tries to find his way through the waiting crowd.

He is already two-and-a-half hours late for his shift. But still heads straight for the bus-stop to make it to his work site at the Corniche, hoping to manage half a day?s work, for his half-day salary.

But now with the clinic base being shifted to a bigger place in Mamoura, at least Rehman and hundreds of other ill men, who need medical attention, will hopefully have a place to sit while they wait for a doctor to see them.