JEDDAH, 19 February 2007 — Light was thrown on the current situation of the Kingdom’s health sector at the First Forum for Medicine and Law that began on Saturday at the Hilton Hotel here. The forum has been organized by the Saudi Law Training Center and is being supervised by the Health Ministry.
The opening session on the first day discussed the importance of charities in supporting the health sector in the Kingdom. “Society must cooperate with the government in order to support and develop health services in the country especially since health problems are increasing,” said Saleh Al-Turki, chairman of the Al-Birr Charity Society.
Prince Fahd ibn Salman Charity was cited as an example of charities that help patients who suffer from kidney failure, which is a growing health problem in the Kingdom. Dr. Abdullah Al-Dughaither, spokesman of the society, said in his lecture that only a small number of charities focus on health care. “Out of 381 charities in the Kingdom only 34 are concerned with health care,” he said.
“Services given to patients of kidney failure need to be improved,” said Dr. Al-Dughaither, adding that there are only 2,771 kidney washing machines for 9,000 kidney failure patients in the Kingdom.
He also called on heads of health charities to meet regularly in order to exchange experience and guarantee the spread of health services across the Kingdom.
Lectures on health insurance triggered a heated debate. Dr. Mohamed Ba-Khotma, professor of surgery at King Abdulaziz University Hospital, and Dr. Adham Jad, economic consultant for insurance affairs, differed on whether people should be insured or not.
“I’m totally against the health insurance system,” said Dr. Ba-Khotma. “We assume that health insurance will bring down the health care bill for the government, but it is not true as has been proven in other countries. Insurance will on the contrary increase expenditures,” he added.
On the other hand, Dr. Jad defended the health insurance system and blamed patients, price of medicines and hospitals for the rising cost. “When insured, patients tend to visit doctors more often which becomes a burden on insurance companies especially when hospitals increase their treatment costs and medicine prices go high. The result will be that the companies will increase their fees,” he said.
He added that the role of health insurance is to financially cover the expenses of treatment and not health care.
Dr. Ba-Khotma spoke about many health problems that he feels medical insurance would not be able to solve. “Health insurance give facilities to financially capable people. Poor people are left worse off,” he said.
He added that he supports the idea of decreasing the bill on the government by training more people, increasing the number of hospitals and carrying out more administrative reforms. “There must be a collective effort done within the health sector to avoid duplication of work. This way we can give more services with reduced expense,” Dr. Ba-Khotma said.
According to Ba-Khotma, people pay money to insurance companies but end up using 25 percent of the medical services on offer. Not to mention that the fees for insurance increase each year.
He called for extra care regarding three main issues that negatively affect Saudi society: car accidents, smoking and obesity.
“We need more education and awareness drives to draw attention toward those issues. Decisions must be made to control fast food restaurants. It is all linked. Fast food restaurants are a major cause of obesity and the latter is a reason for heart diseases,” he said.
He also spoke of the necessity of controlling smoking. The government spending in the health sector is less than what is required, said Ba-Khotma.
He said, “I’m not asking for extra expenses here. The expediency is to spend less money but provide better service. The aim is to benefit the citizen. We don’t have to build hospitals with good decoration, but to build hospitals that can do open heart surgeries, for example.”
