TITLE:
Dubai Primary Health Care Centers Conformation to WHO Age-Friendly Primary Healthcare Recommendations
AUTHORS:
Tamer Mohamed Farid Abdellatif, Amal Mohamad Saleh Abdulrahim Al Jaziri, Manal Mohammad Omran Taryam, Nahed AbdulKhaleq Monsef, Amel Ibrahim Buharoun, Salah Ahmed Mohamed Elbadawi, Moulham Saleh Ashtar
KEYWORDS:
World Health Organization (WHO), Primary Health Care (PHC), Elderly Care Unit, Dubai Health Authority (DHA)
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Aging Research,
Vol.6 No.6,
October
11,
2017
ABSTRACT: The WHO project for conforming PHC to requirements of all age groups has
resulted in publishing a toolkit for age-friendly PHC in 2008. The toolkit included
checklists for physical environment and signage properties. This study matched
the current physical environment properties of DHA’s PHC Health Centers
against WHO’s recommendations. This is a cross sectional descriptive study
that included visits to all 12 Primary Health Care Centers in Dubai city during
August-September 2016 with the objective to assess the degree of fulfillment
of current properties of Health Centers building to the recommendations of
WHO as listed in “Age-friendly Primary Health Care Centres Toolkit” [1]. The
study found that 81.86% of physical environment properties are matching the
recommendation of WHO, while signage matching was 44.6%. The study concluded
that most PHC properties have a physical design that met WHO’s
recommendations. The two major deviations were accessibility by public transportations
and presence of grab bars. Factors that had a significant impact on
design were compliance with multiple international and local standards, the
availability of private cars, and the availability of wheel chairs. Signage in DHA’s
health centers followed a central plan that differed from WHO’s recommendations.