When you are coming to Qatar for work, your sponsor (the company that has to guarantee for you) has to send you through medical examination.

This is required by law. So in the morning you will have to queue up at the centre for medical examination, near the fuel depot in the south-western part of Doha. There everything is fully organised. The clerks will tell you to take a seat in the last empty row of several rows of chairs. In front there's another clerk calling the first row to the counters. When the first row gets up, all following rows move forward.

At the counter they check and enter your passport details, check your visa and the official paperwork your employer gave to you. (Unfortunately this paperwork is completely typed in Arabic, but it contains data from your passport as well as from your visa). They collect the amount of 100 Rials from you, take a digital picture, give you a receipt and send you on to the blood test.

The blood test is done like in a factory. Prior to it you get your receipt stamped, then you enter one of several rooms where the doctor will take some blood out of your arm. It takes less than 5 seconds, the doctors seem to be very experienced.

Next step is the x-ray. Stamp on the receipt, one x-ray of your lung and finished. Although the medical part takes less than 10 minutes the whole waiting procedure can take up to one and a half hour.
And I was so lucky, when I reached the first row to be called to the counter, it was just time for the prayer. So another 15 minutes waiting.

Afterwards it takes two to three days until you will get the results. But you will have to call them, if you are interested. Otherwise they will send the results as mail to your employer.


Resident permit
For the resident permit it is necessary to give blood again. This time to check only the blood group. I wonder why a country, so much netted in means of computers, is not able to combine the first and the second examination and share the data? Anyway, this blood group test has to be done in a laboratory. Most people join Doha Clinic, where the test is 20 Rials. I went to a small laboratory just around the corner in the same area and the test was 15 Rials. Unfortunately they stitch you in the finger tip, no chance for taking blood from the ear or elsewhere.
At least my blood group didn't change since I was in military 25 years ago.

Afterwards (or the next day) you will have to go and give your finger prints. There are two places in Doha, one near a girls school and one on the area of the police training institute. The places open 6am and close 7pm. It is advisable to arrive around 6am, although the officers start working from 6.30 on. It is all fully computerised, no dirty fingertips at all. You go there, they check your data sheet by the barcode printed on it and then you have to press your finger tips on the scanner glass. All four fingers of the right hand, the four of the left hand, then the thumbs of right and left hand. Afterwards they take the single fingers again and in the end also prints of your right and left palm. But this time you don't have to pay. But you also don't get a receipt or stamp.

Now I have to wait for the resident permit.

I think, they didn't find blood in the alcohol ... ;-)

Oha, dagegen gehen wir hier mit unseren Arbeitsvisumwilligen ja fast weichgespült um!

Pathaloge, it sounds like quite an adventure there in Qatar. I personally would never survive the beer thing though.

another country to erase from the 'to-visit'-list ....