Nearly 200,000 patients have benefitted from the religious education program conducted by the Ministry of Health (MoH) last year.

Director of Religious Education at the ministry, Ali bin Suleiman Al-Jamahan explained that his department officials meet the patients and help them fulfill their religious rites within the hospital facilities.

Under this program, he said, the officials of his ministry met 196,180 patients in various health facilities in order to console and guide them to Islam. During these visits, the team distributed 49,673 tayamum kits to enable patients to perform their ablutions easily without the use of water. Al-Jamahan explained that there are patients who cannot go to the washroom to perform their ablutions nor use water to prepare themselves for daily prayers. The whole idea of the program, he said, is to help the patients to attend to their religious needs and also to alleviate their mental sufferings due to their respective illnesses.

Under this program, the ministry has distributed 35,139 copies of the Holy Qur’an, 650,461 Islamic literature in Arabic and 121,821 in other languages widely spoken by the foreign workers. In addition, he said his department has distributed 162,842 copies of audio-visual aids on Islamic subjects and conducted some 2,800 lecture programs for the patients.

Beside these reading materials, Al-Jamahan said that his officials have also distributed some 90,000 gifts to the patients.