Abu Dhabi hosts World Health Organization’s regional SARS-CoV-2 workshop

  • Date: 23-Jun-2022
  • Source: Zawya
  • Sector:Healthcare
  • Country:UAE
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Abu Dhabi hosts World Health Organization’s regional SARS-CoV-2 workshop

Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates: Abu Dhabi Public Health Centre, the region’s first dedicated centre protecting the physical, mental and social wellbeing of Abu Dhabi’s population by raising public and preventative healthcare awareness, successfully hosted a two-week-long workshop to train staff from regional National Influenza Centers in the sequencing and analysis of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the COVID-19.

The event which took place at Sheikh Khalifa Medical City (SKMC), part of the Abu Dhabi Health Services Company (SEHA), was held in partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO), the Ministry of Health (MoH), Abu Dhabi Public Health Center (ADPHC) and the WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean (EMRO), the event featured medical staff from Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Libya and Sudan.

During the workshop Dr Francis Selvaraj, Senior Research Scientist at SKMC, alongside Dr Antoine Aboufayad and Dr Rabeh Elshesheny from the WHO, trained attendees on the approved protocol for sequencing SARS-CoV-2 to determine the virus’ lineage and identify emerging mutations and new strains.

The DoH and ADPHC have been working with SKMC’s Surveillance Laboratory, which acts as the UAE’s National Influenza Centre, on a genomic surveillance project since the start of 2021. In partnership with the WHO the project