The Dubai Health Authority’s International Training Centre (DHA’s ITC) — which is affiliated to the American Heart Association (AHA) — has been honoured with the Silver Award for four consecutive years in 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017, in recognition of the exemplary First Aid, CPR and Advanced Cardiovascular Care Life Saving Training Programmes it provides.
Dr Ghaneya Sultan Al Shamsi, Head of Professional Development Centre at the Medical Education Department in DHA, said the ITC is recognised as the international training centre in the Middle East and North Africa with the highest number of regional faculties, training centre faculties and instructors. Since its affiliation to AHA in 2008, it has provided training to thousands of healthcare professionals within DHA and in the private sector.
DHA has always been among the first ten names in the list of highest number of training providers in the field of high quality CPR.
She added that since 2008, DHA’s ITC has provided 2,844 life-support training courses for a total of 45,580 trainees.
Given the high quality training provided for a large volume of healthcare professionals, DHA ITC is approved and certified by AHA as the Reference Centre from the year 2012, said Dr Al Shamsi.
“The centre provides different disciplines of programmes such as Basic Life Support (BLS), Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS), Pediatric Life Support (PALS), etc,” says Dr Ghaneya. “It’s also the provider of instructor level programmes.”
She adds that DHA ITC also provides awareness campaigns every year to educate the public on how to handle situations during an emergency and cardiac arrest.
Every year, programmes are provided to thousands of people to generate awareness on hands-only CPR. In 2017, 2,628 participants were trained through the programme.