Dubai, United Arab Emirates, August 30, 2024: The Dubai Health Authority (DHA), in collaboration with the Dubai Police, represented by the Resilience Centre, has implemented the "Strategic Exercise" initiative. This initiative aims to assess and evaluate the readiness of the healthcare sector in Dubai, its capacity to quickly respond to challenges related to crises, disasters, and emergency health situations, and its ability to manage data, take proactive steps, make decisions, and execute recovery plans.

The strategic exercise scenario was attended by HE Awadh Seghayer Al Ketbi, Director General of the Dubai Health Authority, HE Major General Saif Muhair Al Mazrouei, Acting Assistant Commander-in-Chief for Operations Affairs, Vice-Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Crisis and Disaster Management Team in Dubai, and Director of the General Department of Traffic, His Excellency Major General Rashid Khalifa Al Falasi, Director of the General Department of Transport and Rescue at Dubai Police, His Excellency Major General Jamal bin Adhed Al Muhairi, Assistant Director General for Resources and Support Services Affairs in the General Directorate of Civil Defence in Dubai, and His Excellency Mishal Julfar, CEO of the Dubai Corporation for Ambulance Services.

Dr Khalid Lootah, Consultant in the Public Health and Protection department at the Dubai Health Authority, stated that the exercise involved implementing several scenarios for emergencies and health crises. It serves as a prelude to the field exercise that will take place shortly in partnership with the Dubai Police, represented by the Resilience Center.

He pointed out that the strategic exercise is one of the key initiatives adopted by the Authority in this field, which it heavily relies on for a comprehensive evaluation of the healthcare sector's readiness to deal with any health crises.

Regarding the initiative's objectives, Dr Lootah mentioned several vital goals, including defining the roles, tasks, and preventive measures that should be taken to reduce the likelihood of a crisis, ensuring the readiness of all partners to deal with emergency events, verifying the local risk register and conducting a detailed analysis, coordinating efforts between the concerned entities across Dubai, and assessing the effectiveness of specialized teams' plans.

The objectives also include coordinating between leading and supporting entities in executing roles and responsibilities to mitigate the impact of the crisis and protect lives and property, developing and empowering decision-makers at various levels to make quick and correct decisions, reviewing assumptions about potential risks and threats, testing the efficiency of shifting to different readiness levels, implementing recall plans, and subsequently assessing preparedness, which includes: leadership, control, information exchange, role activation, media coverage, and alternative sites.

Dr Lootah explained that the Authority has identified several essential elements to enhance the initiative's success, including clear objectives, strengthening disaster preparedness, active partner participation, achieving the highest levels of coordination and collaboration with strategic partners, training and qualifying health and administrative staff within the Authority, and developing plans for continuous innovation and improvement.

For his part, Expert Brigadier Ahmad Atiq Burqibah, Director of the Resilience Centre at Dubai Police, said that their participation in the strategic exercise organized by the Dubai Health Authority to measure and evaluate the readiness of the healthcare sector in the Emirate aligns with Dubai Police's pioneering role in enhancing and sustaining integrated work among relevant entities. The Resilience Center plays a central and pivotal role in managing crisis and disaster challenges of all kinds, including health-related ones, leveraging its high level of expertise and competence to support various entities in executing joint scenarios and exchanging knowledge, practices, and experiences to enhance performance in this area.

Expert Brigadier Burqibah added that the Resilience Center at Dubai Police, in 2023, conducted 155 exercises with the participation of 76 partners, including 20 strategic exercises and 135 internal exercises, addressing all areas of improvement with a 100% success rate. This reflects the significant attention and commitment of the Dubai Police General Command and its partners to enhance readiness and achieve the highest performance levels, enabling them to face any challenge professionally and ensuring community safety. Today, we are proud of the Resilience Center, which contributed to Dubai being awarded the Model City Award in three areas (Intelligence, Sustainability, and Resilience) by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, in addition to receiving the Dubai Certification as the Best Model Resilient City Worldwide. The Resilience Center also launched the first-of-its-kind program in the Middle East for security forecasting of global events and threats.