2 key healthcare strategies to be launched in Qatar

The Qatar National Research Strategy and Qatar Cancer Research Strategy, key milestones in the country’s healthcare agenda, are to be launched on Sunday. The strategies will be unveiled at the opening session of Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development’s Annual Research Forum and Arab Expatriate Scientists (AES) Network Symposium at Qatar National Convention Centre. Following the opening address by QF chairperson HH Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, Research and Development president Faisal M al-Suwaidi is to launch the Qatar National Research Strategy. The National Cancer Research Strategy will be launched by Supreme Council of Health (SCH) board member Professor Lord Ara Darzi, who is also head of Surgery and chairman of Institute of Global Health Innovation, Imperial College London. The keynote address on ‘Inventing the Future: Innovation as the Key to Sustainable Development,’ will be delivered by QF’s Research and Development executive vice president Dr Thomas Zacharia. The highlights of the Research Forum are to be presented by QF’s Institutional Research director and Research Division acting executive director Dr Dirar Khoury. Later in the day, there will be a panel discussion on Qatar National Cancer Research Strategy, as part of the AES technical breakout sessions. It will be moderated by professor Lord Ara Darzi and Qatar Biomedical Research Institute’s acting director Dr Abdelali Haoudi. The panellists are professor Robert Brown (Imperial College London), Dr Faleh Mohamed Hussain Ali (SCH), professor Edward Hillhouse (Hamad Medical Corporation), Dr Lotfi Chouchane (Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar), Dr Thenaa Khorsheed (Qatar National Research Fund), Dr Othmane Bouhali (Texas A&M University at Qatar), and Dr Tam Truong Donnelly (University of Calgary, Qatar). The presentations will be on ‘Improving cancer outcomes through translational research - The case of epigenetics (Dr Jean-Pierre Issa, Temple University, US); Biomarker profiling and discovery of innovative cancer therapeutics (Dr Moulay Alaoui-Jamali, McGill University, Canada); ‘Role of stem cell transplantation in the management of leukaemia’ (Dr Issa F Khouri, MD Anderson Cancer Centre, The University of Texas, US); ‘Resistance of cancer to chemotherapy (Dr Hani Gabra, Imperial College London, UK); ‘Targeting survival signalling in Lung Cancer’ (Dr Fadlo Khuri, Emory University, US). In a message issued in the run up to the Forum, al-Suwaidi stated that as Qatar makes the transition from a carbon economy to a knowledge economy, scientific research is becoming one of the country’s most promising areas of development. “In a matter of years, Qatar has established a handful of internationally-competitive research institutes, trained a new generation of science leaders, and built a national framework to support and guide the country’s ambitious science and research endeavours,” he pointed out. QF holds the Annual Research Forum each year to showcase the innovative research taking place in projects, programs and initiatives across our universities and institutes, and by the wider Qatar research community. In its third year, the event will recognise the incredible research progress being made by national stakeholders, international partners and multinational companies in Qatar. The three-day Forum will focus on Qatar’s core research disciplines: Health and Biomedicine, Energy and Environment, Computing and Information Technology, Arts, Behavioural and Social Sciences, Humanities, and Islamic Studies.