Muna Al-Maslamani

Her Excellency Dr Muna bint Abdulrahman bin Sinan Al-Maslamani is a member of Qatar’s Shura Council, a senior consultant in infectious diseases and Medical Director of the Communicable Disease Centre at Hamad Medical Corporation.

What began in February 2020 as the country’s sole isolation location expanded into five hospitals for medical and critical cases and twenty quarantine and isolation facilities for less severe cases.

Her father—may God have mercy on him—died when she was seven. His tenderness remained in memories of him braiding her hair and taking her to school, while his wish that one of his children should become a doctor gave her an enduring purpose. Her mother, widowed at thirty-two with all her children under eighteen, became both parents at once. Academic excellence was the daughter’s way of repaying that devotion.

Ten years after her father’s death, she completed secondary school with distinction. Medicine was not then available to study in Qatar, and at seventeen she had to defend the decision to travel. Her elder brother, acting from concern, initially opposed an option no other girl in the family had taken. She nevertheless became the first to leave home for study and entered the College of Medicine at King Faisal University in Dammam.

Travel was the hardest early test. Shy and closely attached to her mother and sisters, she struggled with student housing, distance and the demands of medicine. Several friends returned home because they could not adapt. A sense of responsibility towards the decision she had fought for, together with family support, kept her at university until graduation.

On returning to Qatar in 1997, she began as a resident physician. Four years of training, study and examinations led to specialisation in internal medicine. In 2002, she became chief resident physician. The role extended far beyond allocating shifts: for four years, she carried responsibility for workflow and the quality of inpatient and outpatient care, often covering duties when colleagues faced family emergencies. The experience made teamwork and shared responsibility central to her leadership.

That same year, she chose infectious diseases as a subspecialty and entered a four-year clinical fellowship while continuing in administration. In 2005, the final fellowship year took her to the United States for clinical work in infectious diseases associated with organ and bone-marrow transplantation, alongside substantial academic research. She qualified as a consultant in infectious diseases in 2006.

From 2006 to August 2012, she served for seven years as Assistant Head of Internal Medicine at Hamad Medical Corporation, and later led the department until the end of 2012. In 2010, she was appointed Director of the Infectious Diseases Clinical Fellowship Programme, Chair of the Medical Research Committee and Vice-President of the Medical Research Center. In 2013, she also became Head of Quality and Patient Safety in the Internal Medicine Department.

Those responsibilities coincided with her mother’s illness from 2010. She accompanied her on treatment trips and, after a six-month hospital admission involving respiratory support, remained beside her after work and through the night. Despite her senior position, she sought no preferential treatment and at times slept on the floor when seating was unavailable. She would leave her mother in the morning and return directly to work, determined to protect both family care and professional standards.

While managing those demands, she began a part-time master’s degree in 2013. She graduated with honours in healthcare and hospital administration from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland in 2015, a few months after her mother’s death.

The Communicable Disease Centre was established in 2016, and she was appointed its Medical Director in 2017. She also defined plans and monitored continuous quality-improvement initiatives across Internal Medicine, aligning clinical processes, patient outcomes, hospital operations and strategic projects with Hamad Medical Corporation’s quality framework.

Her leadership of the clinical fellowship produced twenty-three graduates in infectious diseases through a programme recognised by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education International. Her research record reached eighty-seven publications. Over seven years, she received four major grants from the Qatar National Research Fund, alongside institutional and international awards for leadership and service.

The Covid-19 pandemic placed her specialisation at the centre of a national emergency. She became Medical Director for positive cases across Qatar, and the main incident command centre was activated at the Communicable Disease Centre. What began in February 2020 as the country’s sole isolation location expanded into five hospitals for medical and critical cases and twenty quarantine and isolation facilities for less severe cases.

She formed a scientific committee of specialists to define the disease in relation to clinical presentation, establish criteria for hospital admission and health isolation, and develop clear pathways for care. She oversaw patient-flow plans covering admission, transfer and discharge, as well as testing, staff screening and the operation of clinical and non-clinical services across the centre and associated facilities.

The response required coordinated work with departments, organisations and ministries. Medical teams and support services were trained in testing, infection-control precautions, case definitions and care protocols. She also established a clinical-research team whose papers progressed through publication and review, and supervised preparations for a convalescent-plasma programme using donations from recovered patients to treat active cases.

Her later appointment as a member of Qatar’s Shura Council extended a life of public responsibility beyond medicine. The role sits alongside senior clinical work in infectious diseases and the medical leadership of the Communicable Disease Centre, bringing the same emphasis on evidence, teamwork and service into national public life.