It is wonderful when a school for 50 students is built in a small village. Education is a necessity these days and must be available for all in city or country. At the same time, if such a small school were built in a big city, then it seems to be an example of bad planning and an even worse decision. Surely it would be better to divide one school with more than 2,000 students into two so the process of managing and supervising would be easy and time well-spent. The same is true in the health sector. Building a small hospital in a small village that needs medical services is acceptable but building that small hospital in a big city is a waste of money and resources. Such a hospital will be unable to provide the kind of medical services required in a large community.
Our Health Ministry has 195 hospitals with just over 28,520 beds. In other words, an average of 146 beds per hospital. We accept this from the Health Ministry since we realize that the provision of medical services is its responsibility, even in the Kingdom’s smallest village. But what about small hospitals in big cities with large populations? And what about the hospitals run by other entities within the health sector?
For example, Imam Abdul Rahman Al-Faisal Hospital in Dammam is attached to the health affairs department of the National Guard and to the Security Forces Hospital in Dammam. The National Guard Hospital has 150 beds and only a part of the hospital is operational. The Security Forces Hospital has 200 beds and it serves Dammam, Ahsa, Alkhobar, Jubail, Qatif, Khafji and Hafr Al-Baten. If we assume that the Eastern Province needs these two hospitals, where can we transfer patients — to a private hospital, a Ministry of Health hospital or a Ministry of Defense hospital? Perhaps the best answer would be to build one 500-bed hospital for the security forces instead of building two smaller ones. The truth is that the two hospitals simply cannot serve the Eastern Province; they are more like two small clinics which only transfer patients to larger hospitals. In the future, we will probably enlarge them and have to spend money on staff accommodation and new equipment. Wouldn’t it be better to plan more carefully and build one big hospital to answer present and future needs?
