The Ministry of Health (MoH) recorded 65 million visits to its primary health care centers, emergency units, and outpatient clinics across the Kingdom last year.

Ministry spokesman, Khaled Al-Marghalani, told local media that 90 percent of the 53.57 million visits to primary health care centers involved citizens. A further 11.67 million people visited outpatient clinics at various hospitals.

He said every person visited a health facility on average two times during the year. More than 4 million patients visited clinics for acute problems, 2 million sought help from dentists and over 724,000 visited pregnancy care units, he said.

Meanwhile, more than 17 million cases were registered at emergency departments of hospitals, of which 426,000 were related to gynecology and pediatrics and more than 58,000 for newborn babies, the spokesman said.

From 2008 to 2012, the annual average number of visits per individual dropped from 2.6 to 2.2, he said.

He said 60 percent of patients went to general clinics, 9 percent to clinics for acute diseases, 6 percent for children's problems, 5 percent for dentistry and 19 percent for other problems.

Meanwhile, the ministry has launched a mobile phone application to spread information on how to prevent becoming infected with HIV and AIDS, and contact government experts, Ziad Maimish, undersecretary for general health, told local media.