A total of 16 public health graduates from the College of Health Sciences (CHS) at Qatar University, have volunteered at the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) through its National Volunteering Campaign to help tackle the Covid-19 pandemic.
Public health volunteers joined the Health Protection and Communicable Disease Control Division at MoPH.
During the first two months of the pandemic, public health volunteers supported the team at the ministry in tracking the implementation of some epidemic measures, assessing public needs, and developing awareness plans.
They enhanced public awareness by organising booths in public places and working at the call centre at MoPH to respond to public concerns. The volunteers also helped in collecting data about patients in quarantine and assessing workers’ needs in different settings to plan for distant awareness sessions.
Dr Hanan Abdul Rahim, dean of CHS, said, “Volunteering with the Ministry of Public Health has been a tremendous opportunity for graduates of the Public Health programme to witness up close the tremendous efforts on all fronts, including disease surveillance and community health education, as well as to put into practice what they have been learning in their academic lives. We are very grateful to the colleagues at the Ministry of Public Health for their efforts in mentoring the graduates.”
Regarding her volunteering experience, one of the volunteers noted, “As public health graduates we believe that it is a moral duty and professional responsibility to support the team at the ministry in fighting the Covid-19 pandemic in Qatar. We volunteered at the MoPH and quickly made valuable contribution and became part of a dynamic team.This opportunity enabled us to utilise our health education knowledge and expertise. Our participation was extremely valuable; we have gained hands-on and practical experience and enhanced our capabilities to be better public health educators.”
Public health volunteers are working at MoPH in morning and evening shifts to support tackling Covid-19 in Qatar. Currently, they are supporting the team in case investigation, contact tracing, data entry and analysis.
Qatar University’s Department of Public Health in the College of Health Sciences is Qatar’s first and only provider of Bachelor and Master Degrees in Public Health. The public health programme was established in 2012 with two branches of bachelor degree: Health Education and Public Health Management. In 2015, the Master programme was launched with two streams of Epidemiology and Health Systems Improvement.
