Mr. Abdullah bin Souqat, the Executive Director of Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid al Maktoum Award for Medical Sciences, held a meeting with Prof. Henry Bom, Professor of Nuclear Medicine, Chonnam National University President, Asia Oceania federation of Nuclear Medicine and Biology. During the meeting, they discussed supporting the mutual cooperation in the field of the nuclear medicine.

 

The meeting was held in the Dubai Healthcare City, and the two sides agreed upon the importance of supporting the cooperation among the nuclear medicine Asian associations on higher levels in order to raise the awareness of the specialists and the community towards this specialty as an important and independent practice.

 

Mr. Abdullah bin Souqat gave an idea about the challenges facing the field of the nuclear medicine in the UAE especially the lack of knowledge on both the professionals and the public levels, and controlling the amount of therapeutic and diagnostic radiation exposure.

 

“The UAE institutions should start taking all the required mechanisms to encourage the undergraduate medical students to explore this field as a potential specialty in addition to supporting the continuing medical education by all possible means”, Abdullah bin Souqat said.

 

For his side, Prof. Henry Bom mentioned to the most important challenges facing the nuclear medicine internationally, including that it is not affiliated to a professional community and the number of professionals in that field is limited.

 

“By establishing a permanent forum for professionals from the Asia Oceania countries, the challenges in that field and how to confront to them could be discussed”, he said. 

 

It is worth mentioning that this meeting comes on the sidelines of the regional training course on Nuclear Cardiology using SPECT / CT and PET / CT.

Supported by the award, this course was organized by the Dubai Health Authority and the International Atomic Energy Agency from 3 till 7 May at the Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Academic Medical Center, Dubai Healthcare City.

Engineer Eissa Al Maidour, Director General of the Dubai Health Authority and Vice Chairman of the award’s Board of Trustees opened the course in the presence of Mr. Abdullah Bin Souqat, the Executive Director of the Hamdan Medical Award, and Dr. Shereen Hamada, Senior Scientific Coordinator, along with 18 specialists from the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq.