A consistent solution to uneven care

• Last Updated: June 25. 2008 10:41PM UAE / June 25. 2008 6:41PM GMT

If the quality of the UAE’s public health system were to be evaluated based on the care provided to its lowliest patient, that patient might be in Ras al Khaimah.

The hospital system there is straining at near full capacity and struggling to keep pace with a growing population. Its primary and intensive care facilities offer barely enough space for day-to-day treatment, and would have difficulty meeting the demands of a major emergency, such as an industrial accident or a large car crash.

But change may soon come to Ras al Khaimah and its poorer neighbours. This week has seen a raft of health care policy revisions for the northern emirates.

The Federal National Council gave the green light this week for the long-promised Emirates Health Authority, which will take up the task of managing the public health system in the northern emirates. Strategy and long-term projects will be left up to the Ministry of Health. With a single-minded focus on management, the Emirates Health Authority will be better equipped to handle lapses in care.

Meanwhile, a private donor has financed a Dh30 million hospital extension to Ras al Khaimah’s swollen Ubaidullah Hospital. The new funds will complement the Ministry’s 2008-2010 strategy ­— a 35-point initiative that was designed to standardise the quality of care in the northern emirates with that of Abu Dhabi and Dubai, whose independent health systems are of consistently higher quality.

The Ministry of Health has also streamlined the inspections system by arming Ministry officials with more authority to visit medical facilities and shut them down if the quality of their care does not meet standards. Last week, six clinics were closed and five people arrested for malpractice.

Such developments suggest a new mode of thinking for public services in the northern emirates, which have always sat in the shadows of the south’s skyscrapers and oil derricks. They are poorer, but efforts to improve their circumstances should not be thought of as handouts.

This week’s health initiatives reveal that the quality of public services are known to be inconsistent throughout the emirates and that there is enough political will to work toward a higher common standard of care. This attitude is encouraging and should be extended to other fields.

As it stands, the contours of the national health system are steep and uneven. Health care quality, like education or justice, is one yardstick by which to measure nationhood as designated by functioning national institutions. More should be done by policymakers to ensure that geography never determines the outcome of an illness, a court case or a child’s education.

Of course, each emirate is unique and the architects of this nation understood the difference between unity and centralisation — that the pursuit of common goals is stymied by a singular approach. But the UAE does not improve the public services in the northern emirates at the expense of the southern emirates, because the Government understands that wealth and health disparities in different regions can act as cracks in the foundation of the larger social system.

Indeed, federalism as it was envisioned by the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan demands more from its institutions than parochialism.

Since the UAE was crafted out of the fractured Trucial States in 1971, it has had to learn how to speak with a unified voice on the global stage. That process must continue to look inward and apply this national vision to each of its parts.