Hospitals face crisis situation

Patients should not be blamed for abusing the health care system, a reader says. Other topics: Liwa resort, education

Patients should not be blamed for abusing the health care system, a reader says. Silvia Razgova / The National

The condition Dubai hospitals are facing is the same as the housing market (Dubai's hospitals face battle to survive amid 'abuse of system', May 19).

The story says that there is likely to be a shortfall at the lower end of the market, as health care providers focus on top-end centres for the rich and medical tourists.

Jeffrey Martin, Dubai

Why blame patients and doctors for the obvious bubble created by greedy clinic and hospital investors? The supply is more than double the demand and that’s not a new thing.

Thomas Mnt, Dubai

Finland ‘exports’ love of learning

Peter Hatherley-Greene's opinion article, Why Finnish model of education cannot be imported to the UAE (May 16), can be read as a stout defence of the local educational system. These arguments are very familiar for me and other Finnish teacher trainers working in international contexts.

It is a frequent misunderstanding that international educators import or attempt to copy-paste an education model, or worse yet, an entire “system” into another culture. This cannot be done. The writer makes this point. Each culture is unique and they are, quite rightly, protective of their cultural values, embedded and reflected in the national curriculum. We in Finland would not consider importing a foreign education system or values from England or from any other place. For this reason Finnish education providers or consultants are not exporting their model or their system to other countries.

Yet there are Finnish teacher trainers working in many countries and their work is much appreciated. Since we do not export our curriculum, the history of our country nor our cultural values, what is it that we do then?

We bring with us a student-centred approach, active methods and ways to develop students’ transversal skills while achieving great results. We co-create and adapt the student-centred methods in close collaboration with local teachers so they can call them their own and implement them in their classrooms with pride and confidence. We work with education officials, school leaders and teachers who want to create a well functioning system of their own.

The ways to organise teaching and learning and the methods we work with represent successful and effective practice implemented in Finland and elsewhere. The common denominator for the approaches and methods is that they put the student and the joy of learning at the centre.

As the Finnish saying goes: what you learn without joy, you forget without grief. In short, we export love of learning.

Sirkku Nikamaa-Linder, Finland

Is Liwa resort the greenest?

I read with interest your piece An Eco Oasis (May 18). Although the planned sustainability measures sound good in practice, I will not visit the resort unless it can clearly prove, using internationally recognised sustainability performance measures, its claim to be the world's greenest resort. This is not evident from the article, which omits some important considerations.

Liwa in its natural state is already an oasis and, depending on your definition, much more sustainable than the proposed new “eco” resort. The resort can’t be zero-carbon and will add to the already high ecological footprint of the UAE, as solar panels and battery life cycles are very carbon intensive, a factor that is often omitted in evaluating such projects.

The question of water rights will be important as groundwater reserves in this country are depleting fast with demand outstripping supply, a fact that will not have escaped farmers and other residents in the Liwa region.

Also, the creation of green jobs is questionable as the whole definition is prone to misrepresentation; is your “eco resort” waiter an eco-worker or a hospitality worker? A fundamental principle of successful sustainability is to be scientific and transparent about all quantitative and qualitative impacts – from design to asset retirement – as they affect all stakeholders. If the resort is to be the world’s greenest, it must prove the case and clearly demonstrate that the long-term reality has matched the initial hype.

Volker Soppelsa, Founder and managing partner, Strategies 4 Sustainability (S4S) LLC, Abu Dhabi