The Ministry of Health and Prevention (MoHAP) recently organized, in collaboration with the National Emergency Crisis and Disasters Management Authority (NCEMA), awareness workshops on the Business Continuity Management (BCM).
The two-day event aimed at raising and strengthening awareness of the business continuity management at MoHAP and its affiliated facilities, as well as ensuring there’s no break in its services for whatever reason.
The workshops targeted departments representatives for business continuity, MoHAP employees, all the government and private hospitals in the Northern Emirates.
Run by Sultan Said Al Zaidi, National Emergency Crisis and Disasters Management Authority, the workshop featured the concept and importance of the Business Continuity Management, with a view to enabling all institutions in various vital sectors to provide their services and duties uninterruptedly, not only in normal conditions but in emergency situations as well.
In addition to explaining the compulsory laws and regulations of the Business Continuity Management, and the mechanism of applying the BCM program and its most important operations.
Dr. Abdul Karim Abdullah Al Zarouni, Director of MoHAP’s Emergency, Crisis and Disaster Operations Center, said: “The workshop comes as part of MoHAP’s keenness on implementing the Business Continuity Management Standard “NCEMA 7000” in order to enhance the notion of institutional excellence and to ensure the continuity of MoHAP’s basic services in various and emergency conditions, as well as to prepare the staff and institutional facilities for that objective.”
“We also aim to spread awareness of how to deal with and anticipate the potential hazards associated with the center operations, and effective ways of tackling them with the identification of tasks and responsibilities for risk management,” Al Zarouni noted.
He added: “The workshop focused on explaining the supporting programs, policies, guidelines, and procedures to ensure the continuity of work, assess occupational health and safety risks according to their priorities and intensity, and determine the recovery time from any crisis or emergency that caused interruption of work, thus applying the emergency response plan.”
“People usually get confused between the business continuity and disaster recovery management, but each is a separate entity. Disaster recovery is a small subset of business continuity” Al Zarouni pointed out.
Dr. Amina Ali Abdullah, Director of Risk Management and Business Continuity at the Ministry of Health and Prevention highlighted the achievements of the Ministry in this field which included the obtaining of several international accreditations in risk management “ISO 31000” and business continuity “ISO 22301”, in addition to the successful implementation of the national standard of business continuity “NCEMA 7000”