NEWS FROM THE UAE
SOURCE : THE NAIONAL
 
 
DNA database set to start in a year

UAE - OCT 07: The UAE aims to start collecting genetic samples from residents within 12 months as part of its controversial DNA database project, the programme’s director said yesterday, making it the first country in the world to do so.

Dr Ahmed al Marzooqi, the director of the National DNA Database, also said the order for millions of people to allow lab technicians to collect samples of their DNA by swabbing their cheeks would probably be given as a security directive and not require the passage of new legislation.

“The first step is to set up the infrastructure and hire the lab technicians,” he said in an interview with The National.

“This should take us approximately one year.”

Then, he said, the UAE would start collecting DNA samples from the general public, beginning with juveniles.

“The aim is to eventually have a profile of the entire population,” said Dr Marzooqi, who is also the chairman of the DNA Working Group, made up of various police forces across the Emirates.

“Our goal is to sample one million per year, which could take as long as 10 years if you factor in the population growth.”

Some officials have suggested that the DNA programme may require new legislation, which would then need to be considered by the Federal National Council.

But Dr al Marzooqi said this might not be the case.

“We are not sure if this will go through the Federal National Council or not,” he said. “It could simply be decided as a security matter and not need the legislation of the FNC.”

The legislative route seems increasingly remote given that a new government department, the National DNA Database, has already been formed within the Ministry of Interior and collection kits ordered to help the police gather genetic material.

At present, only 5,000 DNA profiles are stored, all of convicted felons.

The notion of collecting DNA samples from non-criminals has raised ethical concerns about privacy protection.

In Britain, for example, such use of DNA was contested last year in the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled that Britain must purge non-criminal genetic material from its database.

The UAE has not accepted the jurisdiction of any such body.

Even attempting such a database – in which DNA is gathered from the entire population, even those who have never gone through the legal system – is basically unheard of, said Sir Alec Jeffreys, the British genetics pioneer who invented the DNA profiling system.

He expressed concern over the lack of legislation required for a national database.

“It will be interesting to see how this develops,” he said.

“How this works out will really set the scene for how other countries approach this problem. If it’s seen as a great success which the population and citizenry fully endorse, I think it will open the way for a lot of other countries going down this route.

“If it turns into a disaster for whatever reason, that will be the end of the story. You are the interesting experiment at this point.”

Dr al Marzooqi, who is also Interpol’s single Middle Eastern representative in its DNA Monitoring Expert Group, said he was aware of the project’s challenges.

“We are certain the pros will outweigh the cons,” he said. “The issue of privacy is just as important for us as it is important for the public. We will implement strict usage rules and will take secondary tests in court cases to verify the identity matches.”

Other nations could use information from the UAE’s data bank, but not access the material, he said. Treaties and other international agreements would dictate the specifics.

“If there is co-operation with the country seeking the DNA profile, we share this information through Interpol – only the DNA profile, and obviously not the sample,” he said.

Because each country may have its own database of DNA profiles, Dr al Marzooqi said, databases would not be merged with those of any other country.

“Not every country who asks will be given this information,” he said.

The database, he added, would be “instrumental in helping with unsolved crimes, identifying unknown bodies and will also be a great help in major disasters, either man-made or natural”.

It is the latest development in a string of scientific methods the country uses in law enforcement. Most recently, eye-scan and facial-recognition programmes have been incorporated into the Department of Naturalisation and Residency’s efforts to build a national identity database. The compulsory National Identity Card, intended to cover the whole population of the UAE, also maintains personal identification information that could be merged with the DNA database.

Tonnes of dead fish wash up in Creek

A fish lies on the beach along Dubai Creek between Business Bay and Al Garhoud Bridges giving off a foul smell. Charles Crowell for The National

DUBAI - OCT 07: The stench from Dubai Creek was unmistakable, and its cause familiar and instantly apparent: tonnes of dead fish, floating in the water and washing up on the shores.

And yet, the reason for the mass deaths remains officially obscure, the subject of a delayed report.

By itself, the event is not unusual – it often happens around this time of year, the result of depleted oxygen levels in the water, sapped by algae that build up with the wrong combination of high water temperatures and chemical outflows into the Creek.

What is not so clear is the reason the phenomenon appears to be so much more extreme than in previous years.

Usually, a few tonnes of dead fish wash up; this year, there have been reports of more than 100 tonnes being dumped in Dubai landfills since late September. Environmentalists claim they had never encountered the problem on such a scale.

An official report has been compiled by Dubai Municipality and was due for release yesterday. But the release was postponed at the last minute, apparently for review by high-ranking members of the Dubai Government.

It could now be released by tomorrow, a spokesperson said yesterday they were unable to comment.

Yesterday, the beach stretching from Al Garhoud Bridge to Business Bay was strewn with fish, some still alive but paralysed and gasping for air.

Hundreds more lay on their sides in the waters of the creek itself. Most had begun to bloat as they started to decay, emitting a pungent smell.

Rama Swarmi, 33, from India, is a safety assistant at Dubai Festival City’s storm water station, situated next to Business Bay bridge, where about a hundred fish have been trapped in a sluice gate. He first noticed fish being washed ashore on Thursday.

“Most of the fish are about the size of a hand and they appear to have been paralysed,” he said.

“The smell for the last few days has been terrible and made it difficult for my team to work.”

Dr Ulrich Wernery, the scientific director of the Central Veterinary Research Laboratory (CVRL) in Dubai, said that while such events do happen regularly in the Creek during summer, the magnitude of this event appeared to be much larger.

“Over the past few years, there are also some fish dying each year,” said Dr Wernery. “It used to happen more or less once a year, and always in summer when the water temperature was high.”

Previous samples by CVRL had usually blamed high water temperatures and low levels of dissolved oxygen for causing suffocation and bacterial infections on the fishes’ gills.

“You have to face this phenomenon in any stagnant body of water during summer,” said Dr Wernery.

However, he said the laboratory’s previous work had investigated deaths of only several tonnes of fish on each occasion.

He could not explain the difference in scale, nor say what could have caused this year’s event, as CVRL has this time not received fish samples from the municipality.

Previously, experts have pointed to outflow from the Al Aweer sewage treatment plant.

The issue was discussed publicly last year in Dubai at the International Conference on Coastal and Port Engineering. Then, several experts pointed to the nutrient-rich outflow of the sewage plant as the main reason why the Creek water was low in oxygen.

The water is treated so that the organic load and most harmful bacteria are removed. However it has very high concentrations of nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrate, which at 22mg per litre, is several times the recommended safe norm. The nutrients allow algae to grow quickly, a problem exacerbated by the length of the Creek which makes it difficult to flush out the water in its upper part, where the sewage plant discharge is released.

The quality of the outflow has suffered, particularly in the last two years as sewage loads arriving at the plant have reached twice its design capacity.

Dr John Burt, a marine biologist with New York University–Abu Dhabi, explained how nutrient-rich outflow from the sewage treatment plant could be affecting animals in the Creek. “An algal bloom associated with the high nutrient loads recently reported for the Deira creek could be one possible mechanism to explain the recent spike in fish mortality,” he said.

“Increased algal growth is a common response to heavy nutrient loads in the marine system, which could result in fish deaths either through direct toxicity or by lowering the amount of dissolved oxygen in the water column.”

A number of species of algae do produce toxins that can have quite negative ecological consequences at high concentrations, including fish mortalities, said Dr Burt.

“However, this is generally species-specific, and as far as I am aware there have been no reports of toxic algal species in the creek,” he said. “More plausibly, the fish deaths may have resulted from low oxygen conditions brought on by high nutrient loads and warm water temperatures.”

Warm, nutrient-rich water would be favourable for growth of algae and bacteria, he said. This, in turn, could lead to increased oxygen demand, lowering the amount of oxygen in the water available for fish.

Such conditions have been associated with mass fish-mortalities in other areas, including that of Fujairah during the red tide last year.

“However, this is purely speculative at this point, as there are a number of other possible factors that may have led to this particular event in the creek,” he said.

“Dubai Municipality regularly collects water quality data in the creek, and are likely exploring all of these possibilities before making definitive public statements.

“This is a sensitive issue, and the municipality will be working behind the scenes to find a rapid solution for this problem.”

Daman acts to ensure hospital care gets better

ABU DHABI - OCT 07: A major shift in the way the UAE’s largest health insurer reimburses hospitals will dramatically improve the quality of care, a senior company official says.

Daman, the national health insurance company, announced on Saturday that it would adopt a new repayment system for hospitals and clinics – one based on results rather than simply prices.

Dr Jad Aoun, the chief medical officer at Daman, said the aim was to make sure the treatments the company were paying for were of a high quality.

Patients would end up with more and better information about hospitals, too, he added.

“We need to be more focused on the outcomes, which is what the patient ultimately wants and what we are paying for,” he said in an interview. “Bad quality leads to increased cost.”

The aim was for hospitals either to provide better care or to stop providing services they cannot offer at a high standard.

“When we used to tie-up with the provider it was a discussion of utilisation and pricing lists, then negotiations about prices,” he said. “The issue of quality was never on the table.”

Beginning in January, Daman will require extra medical data on patient outcomes for each provider’s 10 most common procedures.

Dr Aoun said much of the other data was already included on the electronic claim form.

The data will include basic information on the patient, such as age and sex, and also details on the success of the treatment.

Determination of success will be influenced by factors such as length of hospital stay, information on infections and unplanned admissions to the intensive-care unit within seven days.

“We previously concentrated on broad inspections of providers to ensure everybody in the network met basic international standards,” he said.

“Now we would like to focus on the outcomes of the treatment performed in these hospitals.

“After assessing the data we may go back and restudy the price paid for the procedure to see if it reflects the quality of the outcome.”

Hospital officials contacted by The National said they did not want to comment on the programme until they had more details. They were first told about it by a letter issued two weeks ago.

Daman has more than 1,400 contracts with health practitioners across the UAE. Some individual contracts cover a large number of premises, and more than 90 per cent of the health facilities in Abu Dhabi are included in the insurer’s networks. Worldwide, it has more than 450,000 providers.

Currently, each facility in the network sends Daman an electronic claim detailing each procedure carried out on their cardholders. The company then pays the hospital based on a pre-agreed price list.

Facilities that fail to send the data required as part of the new arrangements could be penalised with reduced payments, Dr Aoun said. On the flip side, those that outperformed the prescribed standards might be rewarded.

He added that the information Daman collected would eventually be made public so patients could make more informed choices about where they sought treatment.

Dr Aoun referred to a study in the UK that showed most patients base decisions about where to get treatment on recommendations from friends, family or their doctors. Only five per cent relied on published facts.

“We may find out that there is a hospital which performs lots of a particular treatment but actually has very bad outcomes,” he said.

Hospitals will be the first to come under the new scheme; smaller clinics and private practices will come next. Daman will meet providers over the next few months to discuss the details of the plans before they are implemented.

Some of Daman’s more expensive policies cover treatment abroad at certain hospitals and clinics, but the new results-based system will not apply outside the UAE, Dr Aoun said.

The funding model is similar to those in other countries. Australia, for example, measures hospitals’ performance and rewards them accordingly. Its system takes into account the types of patients hospitals see, so that like-with-like comparisons can be made.

Daman is also promising to ensure that benchmarks are fair for all providers.

“The Government expects us to achieve certain quality standards comparable to the best health systems throughout the world,” Dr Aoun said. “To achieve an increase in quality, it is necessary to monitor quality.”

Etisalat users hit by network glitches

ABU DHABI - OCT 07:  Etisalat apologised yesterday for network glitches that left thousands of customers without reliable mobile phone connections.

Users in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah reported being unable to make or receive calls and text messages, with some saying the problem had lasted for days.

Many office workers spoke of missed phone meetings and cancelled appointments due to mobile lines that were inaccessible.

The problem was especially acute at the Cityscape property fair in Dubai, where thousands of those attending struggled to schedule meetings or even find each other with no reliable means of communication. “I tried to arrange a few meetings this morning at Cityscape but couldn’t get through to anybody,” said Robert Johnson, a property agent from the UK. “I didn’t think anything of it until I spoke to a few people later on who said they had the same problems.”

Some said the disruptions affected their mobile e-mail service more seriously than phone calls.

Etisalat blamed the problems on a network upgrade to improve the company’s mobile internet system. It apologised for a “brief mobile service disruption that was caused by scheduled software upgrades”, and said the problems had been resolved.