JEDDAH, 16 November 2007 — Research in the Western world has proved that people living in countries with an abundance of primary care physicians have a better quality of life, said Dr. Muntazar Bashir, a consultant family physician and chairman of family medicine at King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Center (KFSH & RC).

“People in such countries experience less deaths in infancy and labor,” he said during a two-day International Family Medicine Symposium emphasizing the importance of family medicine and which concluded on Wednesday.

The aim of the symposium, which was held at the InterContinental Hotel in Jeddah and organized by the KFSH & RC, was to update family physicians, general physicians and residents on common topics that help in treating patients.

Dr. Bashir added that the symposium was an important venue for people to meet and share experience on family medicine.

The Saudi Society of Family and Community Medicine recently launched a new initiative for families in the Kingdom to have their own family doctors.

The initiative aims to allow patients to have more trust in their physicians by knowing them through different stages of their lives.

As a result doctors are equipped with better knowledge of patients’ health history, making treatment more efficient and effective.

Dr. Bashir has known some of his patients since a very young age, something that allows him to build a working relationship with them when diagnosing them. Another topic that was highlighted during the symposium was diagnosing abused children.

In his speech entitled “Imaging in Child Abuse,” Dr. Irfan Mamoun, chairman of the Department of Radiology at KFSH & RC, spoke about using technology when inspecting abused children.

“When we run x-rays, CT Scans or MRI on children we sometimes notice fractures in the skull, hands or legs, ruptures in the spleen or stomach and other things, which are a result of beating and shaking,” he said.

Dr. Irfan added that it becomes clear whether a child was injured accidentally or intentionally. He also said that most children do not admit that they are abused.

In his session, Dr. Tawfik Khoja, director general of the Executive Board of the Council of Health Ministers of GCC States, spoke about evidence-based medicine (EBM), a new concept of medicine that enables doctors to keep up with advanced medical research and chemical experiments to ascertain the best way of treating illnesses.

EBM started to be used 15 years ago in the West and was introduced to the Kingdom in 2000 when the Ministry of Health established the National Scientific Committee for Evidence Based Medicine.