In October 1936 an article in the American monthly magazine, “The Contemporary Review”, reported on the “unsanitary” and “unhealthy” conditions in Saudi Arabia’s two holiest cities asserting: “The sanitation of Makkah and Madinah was as defective as it possibly could be. Water was scarce and there were no hospitals or good qualified doctors to be found ...” The article went on to blame poor health standards for the low life expectancy and high infant mortality rate in the Kingdom. It added that while conditions were bad enough in urban centers, they were much worse out in rural areas.
How things have changed. Saudi Arabia has been making great strides in building decent health care for its citizens. In less than one man’s lifetime the country has gone from having inadequate medical facilities and no doctors nor specialists to becoming one of the most sought after places in the Middle East for specialty health care. One such field, which has in particular put Saudi Arabia on the medical excellence map, is pediatrics.
“There has been a lot of development and so much change recently both in pediatrics and medical technology overall,” says Dr. Suzan Reyes, a family physician at King Fahd Armed Forces Hospital in Jeddah. “For instance, diagnosis is much easier and now we can treat patients at home in the Kingdom whom we used to have to send abroad for care.”
Reyes continues by saying that another important aspect these days is that there are far more Saudi doctors and specialists now then there used to be. “Doctors who are nationals can understand the complaints and needs of their Saudi patients better and can relate to local traditions and culture. This in turn helps them in knowing how to treat the patients more adequately,” she says. She adds that in the past foreign doctors often had no idea of the effects of certain types of traditional Saudi foods on local children’s health or that henna is a natural, harmless dye rather than a toxic substance.
Reyes says that in her view, one of the most important but simple advances in medicine has been the Ministry of Health’s successful initiative to educate the public through awareness campaigns: “They are publishing brochures and showing videos in the hospitals to help educate people about diseases such as breast cancer, diabetes and also how important the practice of immunization is for their children. I feel this is a vital improvement to health standards for young as well as older citizens.”
Asked what was lacking or still needed to be done to raise the standard of pediatric and health care sector to Western quality standards, Reyes says, “I think that we are progressing well. The only need we have is for more training to further boost the number of Saudi doctors and specialists in the Kingdom.” In her opinion, the need now is not for more pediatricians but for an increase in the number of family doctors like herself.
“Some 95 percent of the work of examining, diagnosing, and providing health care for a child is being done primarily by family doctors. The remaining 5 percent of cases represent patients who have not responded to standard treatment and require further investigation, a specialty operation or admittance to the hospital, because they need specialist care,” she says.
The call for more pediatrics and family doctors has been boosted by the rapid growth in the Kingdom’s population, expected to increase by up to 20 percent by 2016, to some 30 million. There has already been a profound demographic change. Around 57 percent of the population is now under the age of 20.
Aware of the need to add further to the number of local medical practitioners, the Kingdom has also focused on boosting opportunities locally for young Saudis wishing to go into medicine by establishing new medical colleges and universities around the peninsula.
One of these is the newly-built Batterjee College for Medical Sciences (BMC) in Jeddah, which was founded in 2005 and received its first batch of students in September of 2006. BMC is the first specialist inclusive private university for medical sciences in the Kingdom and one of the larger and most modern private institutions in the Middle East.
The BMC says its mission is to provide high quality medical education to international standards while maintaining its Islamic identity and traditions. It also has a research center and plans to contribute to the medical advancement and the improvement of medical technology in pediatrics, as well as other vital fields for the future of health in the Kingdom.
Over the last decade medical breakthroughs have already allowed the Kingdom’s specialist hospitals to perform a range of pediatric transplants and specialized procedures not previously available here and still unavailable elsewhere in the region.
A review by the Oncology Department at the King Abdul Aziz Medical City in Jeddah shows that survival rates in the Kingdom among children with central nervous system tumors or brain tumors have drastically improved over in the last 10 years thanks to advancements in neuro-imaging, neurosurgery and other technologies. The review points out that the complexity of managing such patients has required a multidisciplinary approach. This has led to the emergence of a new subspecialty of pediatric neuro-oncologists, who are dedicated to the management and follow-up of these young people.
Another example of pediatric advancement in Saudi Arabia has been the separation of 20 cases of conjoined twins, sent here from around the world. The procedures were sponsored by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah and were performed by a team of pediatric specialists under the guidance of Dr. Abdullah Rabeeah, consultant in pediatrics and since February the minister of health.
The procedures were administered on conjoined twins from countries including Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Egypt, Oman and Morocco. Following the success of these operations and to demonstrate Saudi Arabia’s benevolence and humanitarian approach, King Abdullah proclaimed that the country would now be know as the “Kingdom of Humanity,” with the Kingdom’s flag being used by the government in relation to any humanitarian endeavor.