RIYADH, 7 February 2006 — A flying hospital fully equipped with all facilities, including an intensive care unit, will be launched aboard a C130 aircraft at the end of February, announced Maj. Gen. Ketab Eid Al-Otaibi, director general of the armed forces medical services department.
During a press conference here yesterday, the major general said this would be the first of eight planned flying hospitals that will be up and running by the end of the year, which will be able to transfer patients to and from any of the country’s hospitals within two hours.
Al-Otaibi made his announcement during the inauguration of the Third Annual Conference of Medical Services of Military Services by Prince Khaled ibn Sultan, assistant minister of defense and aviation, at King Faisal Hall in Riyadh.
“The flying hospital was devised and designed by a team of doctors from the medical services department of the Riyadh Armed Forces. It would help patients to get medical attention without loss of time,” Al-Otaibi told reporters.
Standing near a model of the flying C130 hospital, Al-Otaibi said the aircraft could facilitate most emergency treatments short of dental work, including invasive surgery.
In his inaugural address, Prince Khaled stressed the need for minimizing the long queues at the outpatient reception of the hospitals. He said arrangements are being made by the Medical Services Department at the Ministry of Heath to reduce paperwork by integrating all of its departments, including the pharmacies, libraries, and patients’ records, into an extensive computer network.
He also emphasized the importance of maintaining strict policies on patient privacy.
During the scientific session on Islamic Medicine, Al-Otaibi chaired a lecture discussion on the topic.
“Many aspects of medicine that we practice today were basic practices of Arab physicians,” he said.
“Although there is a great inter-relationship between modern medicine and some of our Islamic teachings, the criteria and characteristics of Islamic Medicine are that it is involved with divine ethics and faith in Allah as the supreme authority.”
Dr. Adel Al-Dayel, director urology department at the King Fahd Specialist Hospital in Dammam, said the treatment of sexual/erectile dysfunction was considered seriously in the early writings of the Islamic physicians and pharmacists.
“The compendiums of medicine from Islamic scholars between the 9th and 16th centuries from Damascus, Persia, Karajan (Tunisia) and Cordoba (Spain) contained a variety of drugs and methods of management of sexual dysfunction emphasizing on erectile issue. There were 102 items identified from those references in relation to improvement of male sexuality,” he said.
