JEDDAH, 28 August 2007 — Health Minister Dr. Hamad Al-Manie yesterday opened a seminar on raising the quality of health care in Arab countries at an event attended by Health Ministry representatives from other Middle East countries.
The event — which was organized by the executive board of the Council of GCC Health Ministers, the Council of Arab Health Ministers, the Saudi Health Ministry and the Central Board for Accreditation of Health Care Institutions — is taking place at the Marriott Hotel in Jeddah and will last for four days.
The seminar, the second of its kind organized for the expert team of the Arab Project to Improve Health Care Facilities, is covering different aspects relating to the accreditation of health care facilities in Arab countries, and aims to prepare a manual for evaluation of health facilities in Arabic, English and French.
Dr. Al-Manie said, “Many medical errors, whether they are individual ones or not, are made because of not applying a quality criteria. So we are persistent that we apply quality measures in all hospitals and health care centers.”
He added, “We as health ministers will anticipate the outcome of this seminar, which would support our directives. Recommendations of the seminar will find the care and support of all Arab health ministers.”
Nancy Baker, assistant secretary-general for social affairs at the Arab League, said at the launch that the project has received a boost at the last Arab summit in Riyadh. “This meeting is an opportunity to gain first-hand knowledge about Saudi Arabia’s experience in accreditation after we learned about the Qatari experience during the experts’ meeting in April,” she said.
The project is aimed at both the private and governmental sectors. Dr. Tawfik Khoja, director general of the Executive Board of the Council of Health Ministers of GCC States, said that he hopes that these four days will help build a future for the program in the 22 Arab countries.
“The Central Board for Accreditation of Health Care Institutions is a unique one and it has four years’ experience in building this project. ... We wish that through the experience of Saudi Arabia and the participation of the Ministry of Health and the Saudi Council of Accreditation we finalize the program in these four days and keep it ready for implementation in all Arab countries,” he saids. There are seven workshops being held at the seminar to study the program.
Dr. Muhammad Khoshim, a consultant surgeon and chairman of the Central Board for Accreditation of Health Care Institutions, talked about the differences in the concepts of licensing and accreditation. “Accreditation is not licensing. Licensing is done to give hospitals or health care centers the permission to start working. However, accreditation comes as the outcome of safe work,” he said.
Dr. Khoshim added that standards are not difficult to apply and are meant to prevent human errors, which is common in hospitals everywhere. “Hospitals have to be transparent and it is not enough to say they are working on errors. They should show how they work to prevent the errors by training staff and abiding by rules and policies,” he said.
Standards include having fire drills to guarantee that all staff know what to do in case of a fire and a program to understand how hospitals should get rid of chemicals and waste from operation rooms. Hospitals go through standard evaluation on this every three years.
Referring to the Saudi experience, Dr. Khoja said there are ongoing expansions in Saudi hospitals and the number of health centers are going up. The government has ordered the building of two more hospitals, 440 health centers and the computerization of 45 hospitals.
In every Saudi village there is a health center, he said. According to the World Health Organization, health center coverage in Saudi Arabia is over 98 percent.
