Doha: Qatar National Child Passenger Safety Program (Ghalai)’s second checking station at Sidra Medicine has seen considerable number of parents showing an interest in ensuring that their infant is placed in a protective car seat.
Since its opening on March 1, some 20 families have come to the station for car seat installations, said Amal Al Farsi, Manager of Patient Education, Sidra Medicine.
“The response has been great,” she told The Peninsula.
The Ghalai programme presents a proven system of safety measures, that can be easily learnt by parents and caregivers, designed to reduce serious injury and death among children involved in car crashes.
Located in the spacious car parking area of Sidra Medicine, the purpose built air-conditioned Ghalai station is designed to accommodate two families with their cars at a time to learn from Ghalai’s certified technicians about the proper way of installing their child’s car seat to ensure that all children are restrained in their car seats properly.
“The Ghalai station is manned by certified car seat technicians who provide education about proper way of installing their child’s car seat to ensure that all children are restrained in their car seats properly. They can also check car seats for proper installation and if it is the appropriate choice for their child. The station is located in the basement parking of Tower A of Sidra Medicine’s main hospital building, and it is designed,” said Farsi.
Speaking about awareness programmes at Sidra Medicine to encourage parents use children’s car seats, Al Farsi said, “As the patient education and health promotion team, our role is to ensure that there is awareness spread across the organisation among staff before we spread awareness among families, and this is to ensure there is consistency in the messages we spread and to ensure they are in line with the same messages of the national campaign. This will help ensure that families across Qatar receive the same information.
"There is also a near future plan to commence bedside education for our new mothers and also throughout the other services in Sidra Medicine.”
According to the World Health Organization’s ‘World report on child injury prevention’, children in vehicles account for up to 50% of all child road traffic deaths in high-income countries; and unrestrained children are more likely to be killed in collisions than those using appropriate child restraints.
“When a child is properly restrained in a car seat the chances of injury is reduced by 71-82%. Although some parents believe that they can protect their child better if they are sitting in their lap, as educators it is our role to ensure that they understand that during a car crash everything becomes much heavier than it actually is due to the speed of the car they are travelling in,” said Farsi.
The Ghalai national programme is a joint venture between the private and public sector, including Ministry of Public Health, Ministry of Interior, Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC), Primary Health Care Corporation, Sidra Medicine, Qatar University, Ministry of Education and Higher Education, and ConocoPhillips. The first Ghalai station has been open and operating at the Women Wellness and Research Center (WWRC) since March 2019.
