RIYADH, 14 March 2004 — Saudi Arabia’s health sector is poised to expand in a big way in the next four years.
Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard, has approved a plan to set up a new medical university by using the existing facilities of the King Abdul Aziz Academy for Health Services and by investing fresh capital and technology to build new colleges and faculties.
“The new university with a faculty of medicine, a new nursing college and a faculty of allied health sciences will be functioning within the next three to four years,” according to Dr. Abdullah Al-Rabeah, the chief executive officer of the National Guard Health Affairs.
He was speaking at a four-day international seminar on evidence-based medicine at King Abdul Aziz Academy yesterday.
The college of nursing alone is designed to accommodate 1,000 female students, which will help meet the country’s current need of an estimated 100,000 qualified Saudi female and male nurses.
Dr. Al-Rabeah said the Kingdom has intensified efforts to train Saudi doctors and nurses to cut the country’s reliance on foreign professionals. “It is our vision to add more disciplines to the university,” he said.
He did not say how much the project would cost but said an SR97 million fund for nursing college and another SR50 million for the medicine faculty had been made available.
“An initial annual amount of nearly SR100 million will be required to operate the university,” he said.
Meanwhile Dr. Tawfik Khoja, national coordinator of the GCC committee for evidence-based medicine, said the Ministry of Health plans to open 2,000 new primary health care centers across the country within the next four years.
