With Qatar hosting a series of largescale events in country lately, studies have shown that the country's healthcare sector is fully capable of handling mass gatherings.

In the last couple of years alone, Qatar has hosted a number of largescale events, ultimately attracting tens of thousands of people. On this basis, the study on ‘Value of project management during a crisis: Successes and lessons from three large projects in Qatar,’ highlights the fact that such massive gatherings tend strain the health systems. However, according to the study, the country effortlessly displayed its readiness to appropriately respond to such gatherings.

The three massive events that the study focused on included the evaluation of COVID-19 screening for the H H Amir Cup, Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Finals 2020, the FIFA Club World Cup 2020, and National COVID-19 Mass Vaccination Project in the Qatar National Convention Centre (QNCC) in 2021.

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“The successful implementation of these projects, maintaining a high level of client and staff safety and satisfaction, demonstrates the value of project planning and continuous monitoring in successful implementation even in the context of uncertain conditions such as a global pandemic. Public and community health authorities may benefit by applying similar principles as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to unfold,” said the study published on the latest issue of Journal of Emergency Medicine, Trauma and Acute Care.

“All three events analysed in the study were managed by Primary Health Care Corporation (PHCC) and constituted a series of experiences, each of which generated useful lessons for subsequent events,” it added.

Key events that recently took place in the country, including the late 2020 and early 2021 time, put the country's healthcare sector in focus, keeping the COVID-19 situation in mind. The healthcare sector, with help from PHCC, successfully established mass vaccination sites, ensuring that a majority of the people were able to recieve their vaccinations on time.

28,000 spectators were screened for COVID-19 for the AFC Finals and H H Amir Cup during November and December 2020. Whereas it took two weeks to screen 25,000 spectators for the FIFA Club World Cup 2020 in February 2021 alone. The country's attempt to miniminze the spread of the virus resulted in administrating 650,000 vaccinations from February 2021 to June 2021.

“The challenges of managing these major public health projects in the context of a global pandemic were met largely because of the capacity of the organisation to take an agile and adaptable project management approach,” the authors, Yasmin Ali morad and Arun Chandrashekhar, have suggested. Ultimately, they have crowned these projects to be a success for the public healthcare in Qatar.

The authors further emphasized and applauded the health sector's willingness to adapt to the changes when strategically planning these events. They added that the operational protocals also reflected this decision by the planning committee and claim that the country has benefitted from this course as well and has shown that they are ready for any new challenges that may arise in the future in healthcare or similar industries.

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Source and image credits: Peninsula