Devika Hastak, freelance reporter, and Marium Saeed, staff reporter

Concerns regarding safety in Education City have risen after Mohammed Abuhaliqa was left lying unconscious for an hour in Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar’s building last Thursday. Abuhaliqa, an Information Systems sophomore at CMU-Q, was rushed to Hamad Medical Hospital and is now in a coma.

Abuhaliqa suffers from kidney failure and was in a private room in the university provided at his request due to his special needs, said a CMU-Q representative in a press statement.

In a message sent out to the community last Sunday, CMU-Q Dean Ilker Baybars said, “While [Abuhaliqa] remains in stable but serious condition, we have been informed today that his condition is improving.”

On Thursday September 12, when his father could not get in touch with him by phone as his wasn’t answering any calls, Abuhaliqa’s brother, Salman Abuhaliqa, also a student at CMU-Q, “looked for Mohammed and found him lying unconscious,” according to an article in The Peninsula newspaper.

“Although we haven’t been told much about the incident, it is truly disheartening and I pray that Mohammed gets well soon”, said Valerie Garcia, a sophomore at CMU-Q. “To be honest, I don’t know about safety procedures, if there are any, that have been set in place for emergencies at the EC campuses.”

According to John Seawright, director of safety and security at CMU-Q, “each branch campus has a unit of security guards who are there to attend to emergencies.”

Seawright added that the Qatar Foundation Emergency contact number is on all ID cards, and it is highly recommended that faculty and staff members wear or carry it at all all times in order to have all necessary contact details if an emergency would happen while they are present.