RIYADH, 1 March 2005 — Nuclear medicine centers in Saudi hospitals strictly comply with radiation norms and ensure that workers are not exposed to unacceptable levels of radiation. Routine inspections of the hospitals’ nuclear medicine centers are being carried out by King Abdul Aziz City for Science and Technology, the Kingdom’s regulatory authority, to check any violation of safety rules.
This was disclosed by Refaat Al-Mazrou, co-chairman of the organizing committee of the first Gulf nuclear medicine conference, here on Sunday. Al-Mazrou, a medical physicist working at the local King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center (KFSH&RC), said that the KACST has been entrusted with the task to work as regulatory authority for nuclear medicine centers across the Kingdom. It licenses the nuclear medicine centers of the hospitals and also the individuals working at these centers.
Al-Mazrou was speaking on the occasion of the three-day nuclear medicine conference being hosted by KFSH&RC from yesterday. The conference will discuss recent advances in the field of nuclear medicine. A panel of local and international speakers will also shed new light on nuclear oncology, nuclear cardiology, physics and instrumentation, molecular imaging and therapy.
Asked about compliance with radiation norms by hospitals, Al-Mazrou said that “no violations have been reported so far”.
