JEDDAH, 24 February 2004 — Premarital medical checkups became mandatory Saturday, with most Saudis supporting the measure aimed at preventing the spread of hereditary disease in the country.
Maadoun or those who officiate at marriages will now demand a medical certificate from the bride and groom. They have, however, no power to stop the marriage but will advise the couples on the basis of the medical report.
The Council of Ministers took the decision last December. “The Cabinet agreed to apply the health regulations for marriage to all Saudis; the couple getting married must produce a medical certificate before concluding the marriage contract,” the Saudi Press Agency reported.
However, the Cabinet said couples would be allowed to go ahead with their marriage regardless of the result of the checkup. The Cabinet decision follows a nationwide campaign to promote premarital medical checkups to scan would-be partners for hereditary or contagious diseases.
Saudi Arabia has one of the highest percentages in the world of people who are either carriers of the sickle cell trait or have sickle cell anemia — in some regions reaching 30 percent of the population.
Sickle cell anemia is spread mainly through inheriting abnormal hemoglobin from both parents.
A study on congenital blood diseases — which include sickle cell anemia, thalassemia and others — submitted to the Council of Ministers in 2002 concluded that 1.5 million Saudis had or were carriers of inherited blood diseases. Every day, 12 babies are born in the Kingdom with the disease and 154 are born carrying the trait.
According to a recent survey published by Al-Yaum Arabic daily, 80 percent of young Saudi men and 95 percent of young women supported the idea. The government has already identified 113 public hospitals and health centers to provide the service in various parts of the Kingdom.
Medical experts said the Kingdom should have implemented the measure long ago. “If we don’t start now, in 50 years there will be 12 million Saudis either carrying the trait or with the disease,” said Abeer Almanabri, the Western Region director of the Project for the Prevention of Inherited Blood Diseases, a volunteer project under the Arab Gulf Program for United Nations Development Organizations.
“When the man and woman are both carriers of the trait, in every pregnancy there is a 25 percent chance that the baby will have the disease and a 50 percent chance it will be a carrier,” Almanabri said.
According to Al-Yaum daily, 735,000 people in the Eastern Province suffer from a hereditary disease, accounting for 30 percent of the total population. In the Makkah region, there are 360,000 patients and carriers, it added.
The government spends about SR600 million on people suffering from such diseases.
The Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs provides SR3,000 annually to 200,000 patients. “If we add this amount to the cost of treatment it will reach billions of riyals,” the paper said. The Health Ministry has estimated the cost of treating a thalassemia patient at SR100,000 annually.
