One of the Qatar Foundation's most ambitious projects is the establishment of the Sidra Medical and Research Center. Ground will be broken in early 2008 for this 400-plus bed ultra-modern inpatient and outpatient architectural and medical care and research gem. The building is scheduled to be completed in 2010, with the doors opening in mid-2011.

Its mission carefully researched and planned in conjunction with local and international experts, SMRC will primarily focus on advancing the care of women and children through tertiary level services and research, as well as a more limited focus initially on diseases of other adults. Specifically, SMRC is projected to deliver about 9000 babies per annum using cutting edge technology, compassion, and clinical research to advance knowledge and optimize outcome for the mother and newborn. For women, SMRC will also have special focus in fertility, breast, and gynaecologic cancers, and other disorders more prevalent in women. For children, SMRC will focus on inherited and acquired disorders, seeking to improve the lives of individual child patients and children around the world through rigorously researched discoveries in all pediatric subspecialties. SMRC's limited initial focus on adults will center on liver and other abdominal transplants as well as abdominal and related metabolic surgery. On the medical side, SMRC will focus on cellular therapy of regionally relevant as well as other diseases and disorders where the mix of available expertise and pathology are judged to be able to make a difference. The medical and surgical teams will work together with the patient as the focus.

WCMC and its partner New York Presbyterian Hospital have been instrumental in the ongoing planning of SMRC’s mission and specific facilities. The integration of medical student, resident, and fellow training along with research and clinical excellence was the vision for SMRC of the Qatar Foundation’s Chairwoman, Sheikha Mozah, and remains the touchstone for program and facility planning. A world-class project planning team in Education City leads the effort, for which WCMC, WCMCQ, and NYPH provide the lead expatriate advisory support.

While details of final planning will continue to evolve for some time, WCMCQ anticipates building a faculty to practice, educate trainees and allied health professionals, and do clinical research in SMRC, to be located just across the street and connected to the WCMCQ campus.

 http://www.sidra.org