DOHA: The Hamad Trauma Center (HTC) receives around 2,000 cases annually, and among them 40 to 45 percent are due to road-related accidents.
These accidents involve motorists, pedestrians, motorcyclists as well as ATV riders, said Dr Rafeel Consunji, Consultant, Director Injury Prevention, Department of Surgery at Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) while talking to media persons.
HTC at the Hamad General Hospital is the hub of the national trauma system in Qatar and provides care to people who get serious injuries across the country.
Besides providing highest standard of care to patients, HTC also aims at prevention as 70 percent of deaths due to trauma occur prior to hospital admission.
HTC also receives around 35 to 40 percent of patients of work related injuries.
“The entire trauma system starts from the 999 emergency call which is the pre-hospital service and it goes to all the way up to rehabilitation. The HTC is right at the centre of the system and it provides the most emergency and urgent care needed by patients. The ambulance service provides the pre-hospital service,” said Dr Consunji.
HTC, through the Hamad Injury Prevention Program (HIPP), is actively involved in preventing trauma and injuries among the population. In this regard it provides evidence-based data on trends of accidents and globally accepted recommendations to entities of different ministries which could provide direct intervention to prevent accidents.
The most important part of the HTC is prevention. We are doing our best to provide local based evidence for preventive measures for everyone in Qatar including children, adults and workers.
“We want to reduce the number of injuries and deaths. Because, 70 percent of people who die from trauma or injuries in Qatar are in the pre-hospital services, no ambulance, no doctor, no operating room machine can save them as they have died at the scene. We are working to avoid this 70 percent of preventable deaths,” said Dr Consunji.
“We were able to prevent 30 percent of deaths through quality improvement, hospital programmes, increasing capacity of physicians, quality of equipment and training of all healthcare professionals,” he added.
HTC has received the Trauma Distinction award from Accreditation Canada International (ACI).
