Speaking at the opening of a three-day International Critical Care Conference at the Sheraton Dammam yesterday, he said: “The government has set aside SR800 million to upgrade critical care facilities in hospitals run by the Ministry of Health.”
The conference is being held under the aegis of Health Minister Dr. Abdullah Al-Rabeeah and described as one of the biggest critical care meetings in the Middle East.
Al-Ghamdi said the ministry is focused on providing the best possible health care facilities to citizens. “Our mission is to meet international standards at the critical care units and centers in government-run hospitals,” he said. “We will get the latest equipment.”
He praised the efforts of the Saudi Critical Care Society and King Fahd Specialist Hospital — the joint organizers of the conference — in creating awareness among the medical fraternity about the latest developments in the field of critical care patient management.
The Ministry of Health, he said, is actively involved in such conferences. “It brings benefits to doctors, nurses and other medical professionals; the knowledge that they gain from this conference will naturally result in better patient care,” Al-Ghamdi said.
Among the prominent speakers at the largely attended inauguration ceremony were King Fahd Specialist Hospital CEO Khalid M. Al-Shaibani, Saudi Critical Care Society President Yasser H. Mandourah, Organizing Committee Chairman Mubarak Abdul Aziz Al-Mulhim, and Scientific Committee Chairman Khalid Al-Maghrabi.
Mandourah thanked the ministry for sponsoring nearly 1,000 participants at the conference. “They come from all parts of the Kingdom, including a substantial number from the Eastern Province,” he told Arab News.
Al-Shaibani said the conference has drawn huge interest from the medical fraternity. “This is the third annual conference focused on critical care. The first one was in Jeddah and the second in Riyadh.”
According to him, a number of international experts are taking part in the conference. “We have 35 global speakers and nearly 200 experts in critical care management who are holding various workshops,” he said.
“Here is a platform for medical professionals to refresh their knowledge base and explore the latest information regarding the science and advances in managing critically ill patients and to meet and interact with the leading scientists and physicians of critical care medicine,” said Al-Shaibani.
Speakers at the conference are busy discussing a host of issues including organ donation, organ transplantation, critical care resuscitation and neonatal intensive care treatment. “We have at the conference state-of-the-art human simulators to help project real-life critical situations to the medical professionals,” he said.
Al-Shaibani said the message from the conference is clear. “A critical care patient is in distress, his family is in distress, and so everything should be done to help him out. The knowledge that these professionals will take away from here will help them respond in a better way to the needs of a critically ill patient. That is what we are trying to do here at this extremely important conference,” he said.
Al-Mulhim, chairman of the conference’s organizing committee, said the aim is to meet the needs of all practitioners in the field of intensive care.
“More than 350 scientific papers relating to developments in the intensive care unit, knowledge of emergency, toxins and disasters, the science of anesthesia and analgesics for the treatment of critical cases, the accompanying challenges of keeping the patient in a coma and the difficulty in dealing with their effects, are under discussion at the conference,” he said.
The conference also includes worksheets to discuss protocols that contribute to reducing the side effects of certain types of treatments.
The deputy minister later inaugurated the largest medical device and pharmaceutical exhibition in which some of the most important global and regional pharmaceutical companies are taking part.
