JEDDAH: Delegates from 13 Gulf and Arab countries will participate in a conference on improving the quality of health services provided to patients in the Arab world, Toufik Ahmed Khoja, executive director of the GCC Ministerial Health Council, said in a statement on Wednesday.

Makkah Gov. Prince Khaled Al-Faisal will open the conference which will be in Jeddah from Oct. 27-29.

“We expect good participation from Egypt, Sudan, Tunisia, Morocco, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen in addition to the GCC states,” Khoja said.

He said the conference was aimed at improving services to patients and discussing ways of reducing medical mistakes that claim the lives of many people in the Kingdom. Khoja said about 27 percent of medical mistakes took place during the process of birth and 17 percent during surgical operations while 13 percent were related to internal medicine and 10 percent involved children.

Khoja blamed the health system for 80 percent of mistakes and human error for the other 20 percent. Work pressure, increases in working hours and a bad working atmosphere were the main reasons for such mistakes. He said past conferences and seminars conducted by the council in coordination with the Arab League were instrumental in improving health care and in creating a safe atmosphere for patients.

Khoja said the current focus on swine flu did not mean ignoring other chronic diseases in Arab and Gulf countries. He said a large number of experts from Arab countries and elsewhere in the world would speak at the Jeddah conference.

“We hope the delegates will come out with a clear vision in order to improve services for the safety of patients and reduce medical mistakes,” Khoja said, adding that the conference would focus on nine topics such as crisis management, ensuring safety of patients, designing hospitals and medical institutions for patient safety, quality and safety of medicine and the implementation of the best practices.