The report has been produced following a Facebook petition calling for women-only hospitals that recently gained momentum. The report also includes a suggested plan to implement the project.

Signatories include religious scholars and tribal chiefs, in addition to 40 male and 30 female doctors employed at various government hospitals.

To support the demand, the report  quoted from fatwas of two former grand muftis, Sheikh Muhammad bin Ibrahim and Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Baz, in addition to a previous circular from the Council of Ministers.

“Among the main calls of scholars in our beloved country is the establishment of hospitals for men and others for women so that men can be treated by male doctors and nurses and women can be treated by women so as to protect them and prevent the mixing of sexes,” says the report.

It highlights the successful experience of Al-Wafa’a Hospital, a woman-only hospital in Onaiza.

“We know it is a difficult project, but we want to collaborate efforts, even though we know there are some people against it. However, it is still possible,” says the report.

It also calls for the project to be implemented in three main Saudi cities — Riyadh,  Jeddah and Dammam — and that the initial focus should be on establishing obstetrics and gynecology hospitals.

The report says that female medical students “suffer from mingling, and by this project we could reduce their suffering and prevent women from leaving the medical field.”

It also calls on the authorities to double the salaries of full-time female doctors to encourage them to work since they might be restricted by family obligations. The report further recommends the opening of women-only medical colleges, saying “Japan  has 17 women-only colleges and that it is more concerned with protecting the dignity of women than us.”

The report also suggests rewarding hospitals that prevent mingling or try to limit it, and asks for the formation of a higher committee to study and put in place plans to prevent gender-mixing.

A Saudi woman launched a Facebook group — titled Pure Hospitals — last October, calling for a ban on the mixing of genders in hospitals.

The group’s founder writes that the “mixing of men and women in hospitals and other places leads to corruption and vices such as exchanging looks, breakdowns in barriers between men and women, and unethical relationships forbidden in Islam.”

The group started with 20 members and now has 1,450.

The group also calls for the establishment of separate health facilities for women in which only women doctors, nurses, technicians and administrators work.

However, Dr. Abdul Hafeez Khoja, head of the Al-Mosadia Center at King Fahd Hospital in Jeddah and a health writer for Asharq Al-Awsat, said although the idea might seem attractive for women seeking privacy, it is not practical.

“There are still some specializations, mainly surgery, that women are not approaching,” he said, adding that medical schools are still accepting men in specializations like obstetrics and gynecology, and that they would need to be employed later on. “Even when we talk about men-only hospitals, then that is not practical also. The majority of nurses tend to be women, not only here but around the world,” he said.

Badria Al-Bisher, a columnist for Al-Hayat Arabic newspaper, said recommendations such as this are carried by newspapers that promote conservative views and claim that the majority of people support them.

“They want to restrict women from being in public and claim that there is no protection for women if they go out in society. They basically have psychological problems,” said Al-Bisher, adding that if this report were to be discussed by the Shoura Council, then other reports addressing issues like women driving should also be discussed.

“The Ministry of Health can study this issue if a large number of women in the Kingdom want to go to women-only hospitals but this should not be something everyone is made to follow,” she added.

According to the last annual report issued by the Ministry of Health in 2008, there are 24,802 physicians in the Kingdom, of which 5,652 are women. Nineteen percent of them are Saudi. The total number of nurses, however, is 55,429, of which 40,636 are women.