du organizes voluntary Beta Thalassemia and Sickle Cell Anemia blood screening for employees

This comes in support of the National Health campaign "UAE Free of Thalassemia by 2012", under the patronage of H.H. Sheikh Nahyan Bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, Minister for Higher Education and Scientific Research and launched by Dr. Maryam Matar, Executive Director of the UAE Genetic Diseases Association.

The two-day drive was scheduled for 9-10 June to check for genetic blood disorders such as Beta Thalassemia and Sickle Cell Anaemia and is intended to increase employee's awareness on the health risks posed by these blood disorders.

Hala Badri, EVP, Corporate Communications said:

"Our commitment to support the government's effort in the areas of prevention and control of life threatening diseases is one of the key pillars in du's CSR strategy. We organized the blood screening drive to educate our employees internally about the risks of genetic blood disorders, because we believe that the first step towards achieving this is to start with ourselves. We also want to endorse the enormous efforts the UAE Genetic Diseases Association has put to fight against Thalassemia and Sickle Cell Anemia in the country. We are confident that our employees will enthusiastically support this initiative and make it a resounding success."

Dr. Maryam Matar, Executive Director, Genetic Diseases Association, UAE said: "The UAE Genetic Diseases Association has been able to considerably reduce the impact of common genetic disorders prevalent in the country through its community outreach programs, health education, counseling and free screening tests. We thank the government in supporting and increasing awareness among people, UAEGDA now has a free genetic clinic equipped with a state-of-the-art screening facility supervised by internationally renowned experts".

"The first program of UAE Genetic Diseases Association is UAE Free of Thalassemia 2012 and as part of this, UAEGDA has introduced new mobile units to facilitate blood collection. We start with this service utilizing these blood screening vans with an exclusive blood screening program being conducted for the employees of du and hope to organize similar programs for the employees of other corporate houses in the UAE to ensure that our future generations are born healthy," Dr. Matar concluded.

du had issued an internal communication to invite all employees to participate in the screening. The GDA van was stationed in front of Dubai Media City (DMC) Building 14 from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm for the two consecutive days.

du employees pre-registered on the association's website to obtain a confidential user name and password, to be used late to retrieve the tests results once available.