These are busy days for Dr Faisal Al-Mousawi. The chairman of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland Medical University of Bahrain is about to take over management of the government-built King Hamad hospital. The medical school was set up in 2004 and in two years’ time its first physicians are due to qualify.

Next year Dr Mousawi will start financing for a $600m healthcare city next to the hospital, where he hopes the great and good of the international medical community will set up branches.