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Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC), in collaboration with the University Children’s Hospital (UCH) in Heidelberg, recently hosted the 6th International Workshop on Newborn Screening and Liver Cell Therapy.
The three-day workshop highlighted latest advances and emerging ideas in the field of metabolic and endocrine screening and comprised interactive presentations by leading experts and eminent scientists from Germany and Qatar.
More than 160 healthcare professionals including neonatologists, pediatricians, metabolic laboratory personnel, and nurses participated in the workshop, which served as a dynamic platform to emphasize early detection and prevention of inborn diseases.
Many babies are born with potentially severe diseases that can have detrimental effects to their health. Effective newborn screening programs such as the Qatar Newborn Screening Program (QNSP) allow healthcare professionals to discover the diseases within the first few hours of life, resulting in prompt medical intervention.
Medical Director of Women’s Hospital (WH) and Director of the QNSP, Dr. Hilal Al Rifai, underlined that QNSP is one of the most fruitful preventive programs in Qatar, which requires all babies born in the country to undergo comprehensive and free-of-cost screening for a number of metabolic and endocrinal diseases. According to Dr. Al Rifai, over 200,000 newborns have been successfully screened in Qatar since the launch of the program in 2003.
Commenting on the significance of the workshop, Dr. Al Rifai said: “This is a great opportunity for all involved in newborn screening and management of metabolic diseases to reflect on the successes of the preventive programs aimed at promoting the optimal growth and development of newborns in the country. The annual workshop reaffirms HMC’s commitment to providing the safest, most effective, and most compassionate care to each and every one of our patients and owes its success to the unlimited support of HMC’s Managing Director, Dr. Hanan Al Kuwari.”
Senior Consultant, Pediatrics Neonatology, and Head of the Newborn Screening Unit at WH, Dr. Ghassan Abdoh noted that an important aspect of the workshop was the impact of newborn screening on parents. “Parental anxiety and stress during newborn screening is a common phenomenon. This is usually due to parents’ lack of information and understanding of the screening process and in some cases due to the time it takes to receive the screening results. With the exchange of expertise at this workshop, we have been able to identify new strategies and approaches that will allow parents to have more positive newborn screening experience.”
Prof. Georg Hoffman, Professor of Pediatrics and Chairman of the Department of Pediatrics, University of Heidelberg commented: “The workshop builds from the successful collaboration between two world-class medical centers, HMC and UCH, in the area of newborn screening and metabolic medicine. As a result of this collaboration, hundreds of children and families have been saved from experiencing the devastating effects of severe inherited diseases and now enjoy an improved quality of life. Qatar has certainly emerged as one of the few countries in the world to offer the most effective preventive healthcare services.”
Prof. Hoffman added that joint efforts by both organizations have led to increased training opportunities for healthcare professionals working in this field. “We have been able to provide highly-specialized and advanced training to several doctors and nurses from Qatar and are now hoping to also extend this wonderful program to healthcare professionals from other GCC countries.”
The workshop also shed light on the latest outcome of the International Safety and Efficacy of Liver Cell Application project, established as a joint venture between HMC, UCH and German biotech company, Cytonet GmbH & Co. The program has been instrumental in facilitating the treatment of newborns affected with urea-cycle defect, a rare genetic disorder caused by a deficiency of the enzymes responsible for cleaning out toxins from the blood stream.
At the workshop, participants were able to gain thorough insights into a variety of topics including, opportunities and challenges of newborn screening, latest testing methods, approaches and strategies in newborn screening, overview of inherited metabolic disorders and those common in Qatar and the region, liver cell transplantation, prevention of ‘Inborn Errors of Metabolism’, and the importance of communication with parents of patients.
