Sheik's gift furthers Hopkins partnership

The Baltimore Sun

On one hand, there is the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, flush with oil money and eager to associate itself with the iconic brands of the world's culture, from the Louvre to Ferrari.

On the other hand, there is Johns Hopkins Medicine, seeking to expand its worldwide reach to fulfill its sense of mission, add to its luster and to generate revenue.

Their interests intersected this week - not for the first time, but in the biggest way yet - with the announcement that Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, ruler of Abu Dhabi and president of the United Arab Emirates, was making a "transformational" gift. The sum was not disclosed.

It will support heart research at Hopkins and an AIDS research program in Uganda. Mostly, the contribution will help finance a billion-dollar project now in its giant-hole-in the-ground stage. Two 12-story clinical towers will replace half of what is now Hopkins Hospital by 2010.

One tower, a 355-bed facility, will be named after Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the donor's late father, from whom he has said he learned "the need for patience and prudence in all things."

Sheikh Zayed founded the UAE by bringing together his emirate, Dubai and five smaller sheikdoms. He was president from 1971 until his death in 2004.

Over the past year, an Abu Dhabi doctor with connections to the royal family and a Hopkins doctor who has mentored him approached the royals with the idea of a major gift, according to Steven Rum, senior associate vice president for development for Johns Hopkins Medicine.

The chief fundraiser and his staff assembled a sort of portfolio of philanthropy. Inside was an artist's rendering of the new clinical tower labeled with Sheikh Zayed's name.

"Once they said, 'We want to do this,'" Rum said, "this was turned around in two weeks. We got everybody on a plane."

That would be the Hopkins hierarchy: Dr. William R. Brody, university president; Dr. Edward D. Miller, dean of the medical school and CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine; Ronald R. Peterson, CEO of Johns Hopkins Hospital; and Dr. Michael J. Klag, dean of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

About 100 relatives and government ministers gathered Monday in "a huge room in the palace," seated in chairs around the perimeter, according to Rum. Then both sides moved to a smaller room to sign documents in a scene that "reminded me of the Paris Peace Conference," he said.

It was a peak moment in a relationship that has been building for more than a decade.

Patients from Abu Dhabi and other UAE states have streamed to Hopkins' East Baltimore campus for advanced treatment. The UAE pays medical bills and airfares for citizens who need treatment they can't get at home - not just at Hopkins but elsewhere in the United States and Europe.

When they come to Hopkins, they are often cosseted in the hospital's luxury wing, the Marburg Pavilion. Amenities include a chef and robes to cover those embarrassing hospital gowns.

Hopkins, and other prestigious American hospitals, began developing special services for well-heeled foreign patients about 20 years ago, as insurers began pressuring for discounts and questioning the need for some procedures. Foreign patients pay list price, buy extra services and don't need insurers' permission.

The UAE is the largest supplier of patients from the Middle East to Hopkins, with about 250 last year of about 3,000 foreign patients, including many from Europe and Latin America.

After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the flow slowed sharply, as it became more difficult for patients, especially from the Middle East, to get visas quickly enough to be treated.

Hopkins has sent doctors to the UAE - and to England and Switzerland - to treat UAE patients, including members of the royal family, according to Rum. Citing patient confidentiality, Hopkins officials would not elaborate.

In the institution's first contract to manage a foreign hospital, Hopkins assumed operation last year of Tawam Hospital in the oasis town of Al Ain, birthplace of Sheikh Khalifa and his father.

Other prestigious academic medical centers have been at work in the oil states. In Dubai, Harvard advises on a "health care city" and the Mayo Clinic runs a cardiology center. The Cleveland Clinic is part-owner of a hospital in Jidda, Saudi Arabia. Cornell has a complete medical school in Doha, Qatar.

While the U.S. medical centers are competing, so, in a sense, are the oil states, lining up projects with high-profile Western partners in "a little bit of one-upmanship," said Jon B. Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

A new generation of leaders, often educated in the West, is coming to power, Alterman said. "They're determined to be more cosmopolitan and to be perceived as more cosmopolitan."

Dubai, for example, is constructing the world's tallest building and has an affiliation with Harvard's Kennedy School, he said. It also has a giant indoor ski slope - certainly unusual in the desert - and has attracted a Formula One auto race.

Abu Dhabi, not to be outdone, agreed in March to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to refurbish a wing of the Louvre museum in Paris, to be named for Sheikh Zayed, and to attach the Louvre name to a new museum that it plans to open as part of a major tourist development in 2012. The complex is also to include another top-brand museum, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, and a performing arts center.

Last month, Aldar, an Abu Dhabi property developer, announced it had reached an agreement with Ferrari, the Italian carmaker, to construct a Ferrari Theme Park consisting of family rides, a driving school and virtual simulations, according to UAE Interact, a government-sponsored Web site.

"These societies are still conservative," Alterman said, "regardless of the number of skyscrapers and amusement parks."

"Their vision is to have Abu Dhabi be on the world stage and, in a very tumultuous and troubled region, show that people of different cultures can and do live together peacefully," said Steve Thompson, CEO of Johns Hopkins International.

That's the Hopkins arm that oversees the Tawam Hospital and relationships with medical institutions in places including Mexico, India, Panama, Turkey, Singapore, Japan and Trinidad and Tobago. Of all such efforts, the UAE relationship is the largest, Thompson said, accounting for about $30 million a year in management fees and patient revenue.

Thompson said Hopkins is preparing bids for contracts with other medical institutions in the UAE. At Tawam, it has hired eight top managers, including two moving from Baltimore, to operate the hospital. Other Hopkins staff members travel there - some for two or three months at a time, some for a week to conduct training or lecture or give advice.

Jane Shivnan, executive director of Hopkins' Institute for Nursing, a training unit run collaboratively by the nursing school and the hospital, has been twice: once was with a team assessing cancer treatment; the other was to help lead a conference on nursing care.

She said the hospital contains some old sections but is largely modern and well-equipped. The staff, she said, has been recruited from around the world, so much work is conducted in English.

"The opportunity to interact with nurses from different cultures is tremendously satisfying," she said. "It helps us to be better nurses, and opens us to different opportunities."

Klag, the dean of the Hopkins public health school, said he has been to the UAE four times. His faculty is developing a curriculum for graduate students from the UAE and other Persian Gulf countries who could earn a doctorate in public health.

"Here's a country trying to look at health problems of its people and plan for its future," he said.

bill.salganik@baltsun.com

Sun reporter Dennis O'Brien contributed to this article.

Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan

Year and place of birth: 1948, in Al Ain, his father's hometown

Education: United Arab Emirates schools

Previous appointments:

1969: Named crown prince of Abu Dhabi, the largest and wealthiest of the seven emirates that make up the United Arab Emirates; also that year named head of the Abu Dhabi Department of Defense

1971: Named prime minister of Abu Dhabi

2004: Named president of the United Arab Emirates upon his father's death

Interests: Horse and camel racing

[Sources: United Arab Emirates Embassy, Financial Times of London and the Xinhau News Service]

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