Page 292 - UAE Truncal States

A City Slate - Example Dubai

neighbourhood clinics were established lo relieve congestion in the
central facilities and to meet a popular requirement for treatment at
clinics among people of the same background and living in the same
neighbourhood. Many families even prefer to pay for a visit to a
private practitioner,50 but they often fail to establish a “family
doctor" relationship with him because there is a tendency to change
from one lo another, sometimes merely because of a feeling that the
first did not prescribe enough medicine.
In a community of people with such a variety of backgrounds as a
Dubai merchant, a beduin from the desert, a Pakistani immigrant, an
Egyptian teacher, or a British engineer, the approach to and
appreciation of health services are very different indeed. A large
section of the population had even to be made lo want doctors and
hospitals, because old practices, which passed as cures before the
arrival of modern medicine, cannot easily be eradicated among either
the local or the immigrant communities. In previous times a
knowledgeable old woman or the mutawwa' was called in lo provide
their age-old concoctions and charms, to cauterize and to write
verses from the Koran on paper inserted in amulets.
The health service is only one example of a number of fields where
the provision of modern social services has to be implemented and
promoted at several levels: firstly, the provision of adequate build­
ings, secondly, the establishment of procedures; thirdly, the recruit­
ment of qualified and suitable staff; fourthly and most important,
educating the public to appreciate and to use sensibly the facilities
which are made available.

Education
In this description of the social development of Dubai from the early
1950s to the end of the City State’s predominantly mercantile and
pre-industrial phase in the early years of the 1970s, it is not possible
to list all the changes which were effected by official bodies and
through commercial enterprise. But some details of the development
of education are essential to give a good picture of the transformation
of Dubai from a predominantly Arab traditional town to a multi­
national community serving many interests. With the exception of al
Ahmadiyah, the schools which were established inDairah and Dubai
by the Majlis of the reform movement in 1938/9 were closed again
during the World War for lack of funds, education remaining largely

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