The Strategy and Governance Department at the Dubai Health Authority (DHA) is organising a series of webinars on various key issues ranging from the best methods to respond to the Coronavirus crisis to addressing the mental health of employees and community during the pandemic.

The webinars originally started in June 2020 with the aim of raising awareness among policymakers and medical professionals in Dubai about developing trends and key innovations in the healthcare sector in view of the COVID-19 pandemic. Noting their success, the webinars will continue until December 2020.

Speaking over the development, Dr Nahed Monsef, the Director of the Strategy and Governance Department at the DHA, noted that webinars talk about the functioning of various governments and international agencies and their cooperative response to tackle the implications of the COVID-19 crisis.

She added that the webinars also discuss the best strategies to revive communities seeking to recover from the impact of the pandemic. In addition, they talk about various ways to protect and support the needs of healthcare professionals, restore economic activities across the world, and alleviate the unprecedented impact of social distancing measures on public health.

"The webinars attendance is open to DHA leaders and healthcare professional, government entities, and private sector attendees including, hospitals, insurance companies, and consulting companies,” Dr Nahed Monsef noted.

Details of the upcoming webinars:

She stated that there are two upcoming webinars - one will take place on Sunday, discussing the sustainable medical supply chain system. It will talk about the current preparedness strategies of the supply chain, best practices and resources for healthcare suppliers in line with ongoing COVID-19 circumstances. In addition, it will address key areas through which supply chain risks can be mitigated and necessary actions required for managing the COVID-19 supply emergency.

The final webinar will take place on December 7, discussing the changing work from home environment and its impact on business productivity. The webinar will highlight various practices on achieving higher productivity and ensuring the wellbeing of employees while working from home. Some of these practices include improving technologies for effective working from home, ensuring personal productivity and emotional wellbeing, maintaining social relationships within the company, working together professionally to reduce the negative impact of the circumstances on employee performance management.

Till date, five webinars have been completed:

International best practices in response to COVID-19: This webinar talked about the response of governments across the world to tackle the COVID 19 crisis. It also discussed how governments mobilised their resources to address the social and health repercussions of the pandemic and managed gradual resumption of economic and business activity.

Screening and contact tracing impact on containment: This webinar discussed how a highly effective program of COVID-19 testing, tracing, isolating infected cases and quarantining contacts helped in achieving similar benefits as a lockdown at a time when the majority of the population carried on with their day-to-day activities.

Occupational health and safety for healthcare workers: This webinar discussed various risks faced by healthcare professionals while dealing with COVID-19 cases including long working hours, pathogen exposure, fatigue, declining mental health, and occupational burnout. It also shed light on ways through which these health hazards affect the safety of medical professionals and quality of their services, in addition to ways to mitigate these hazards.

Workforce & community mental health: This webinar explained the impact of the pandemic crisis on the mental health of people as it caused a deep emotional trauma for society. The webinar shared some effective strategies that could be implemented at every stage of COVID-19 response in a bid to address the mental health requirements across different sections of the society which also includes healthcare professionals.

Phased reopening based on epidemiological evidence on COVID-19: This webinar shared the details about global responses to recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, while providing an overview of progressive approaches of the global health care sector and social protocol design and governance.