The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation signs a Memorandum of Understanding with the International SOS

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (MoFAIC) signed a memorandum of understanding with International SOS to foster cooperation and partnership in the field of providing health care services to UAE nationals abroad, in order to achieve MoFAIC’s strategic objectives to excel in delivering the proactive services and caring for nationals abroad.  

The memorandum of understanding was signed by H.E. Faisal Issa Lutfi, Assistant Undersecretary for Consular Affairs, representing MoFAIC, and Mrs. Katherine Brett, General Manager representing International SOS, in presence of several officials from both parties.

The memorandum of cooperation between the two parties includes the provision of medical advice, the implementation of medical evacuations, and support in the treatment of critical medical cases of nationals. This will contribute to expediting the procedures of deciding to transfer the patient to the UAE to be completed within only 6 hours from the hospitalization of the nationals abroad. 

To ensure the achievement of fruitful cooperation and strengthen the partnerships with institutions in the framework serving the nationals’ interest MoFAIC collaborated with the health entities in the UAE to provide the best healthcare services for nationals MoFAIC worked with the Ministry of Health and Prevention to activate the unified mechanism to handle the emergency medical cases of UAE nationals abroad, in addition to implementing several medical evacuations in the UAE. MoFAIC also cooperated with Abu Dhabi Department of Health to put makeshift clinics into service in the UAE missions abroad, which contributed to providing an excellent healthcare service to Covid-19 infected nationals, in addition to implementing several medical evacuations in the UAE. MoFAIC partnered with Dubai Health Authority to follow up on about 500 Covid-19 infected nationals abroad through the “Doctor per UAE nationals’ service and provided psychological support for students on scholarships abroad. 

MoFAIC also worked on creating a unified mechanism to handle the emergency medical reports through coordination with the UAE representative missions abroad which work on responding to the emergency medical reports and following up the workflow according to an integrated and unified plan that ensures the reports are received and reach the concerned teams as soon as possible. MoFAIC utilized an integrated mechanism and system to monitor the teams’ response to reports from their reception till completion and to coordinate with all parties to ensure the nationals are getting the support they need.

As a part of MoFAIC’s commitment to assess the nationals’ satisfaction with the Ministry’s response to their emergency medical reports, the team for monitoring quality and performance in the MoFAIC’s emergency department will contact all nationals after closing their reports to check on them and assess how satisfied they were with the service provided to them. The quality of performance is also monitored by indicators that ensure expedited implementation and response, and are assessed based on specific standards to measure the efficiency and effectiveness of the concerned team’s performance in responding to and handling the emergency reports.

It is worth noting that MoFAIC has launched an emergency line to respond to emergency reports of UAE nationals abroad, by contacting the following number 0097180024.