Participants at the first forum on Traffic Safety held here have recommended that heart patients should not be issued driving licenses. Dr. Ali Al-Ghamdi, Director of Health Affairs Administration in the Eastern Province, said that patients suffering from heart diseases should be issued driving licenses only on the recommendation of their doctors. He said he has reports showing that some heart patients developed serious complications while driving resulting in fatal accidents. Some 30 percent of beds in the region's public hospitals were occupied by accident victims, he said quoting statistics. It has emerged that only five percent of the Kingdom's hospitals are able to rehabilitate traffic accident victims. In response to the statistics, a National Program for Assisting the Injured in Traffic Accidents will begin operation next month. Chairman Dr. Saud Al-Turki said: “It will be implemented in the National Guard Hospital, as of next month for a period of six months. Afterwards the experiment will be implemented in the Riyadh region.” Under the system, the scale and nature of a patient's wounds will be ascertained before his arrival at the hospital. This information will be relayed to doctors to allow them to be fully prepared for any emergency. However, Al-Turki warned that deaths due to traffic accidents are extremely high and annually reach 12,000. “The Kingdom has the highest rate of traffic accident deaths in the world at 50 deaths for every 100,000 people compared to 16 deaths for every 100,000 people in the US and 4.8 for every 100,000 in Sweden,” he said. Meanwhile, a top Saher official announced Monday that the final stages of the Saher traffic system will be put into place by the end of next year. “The first stage for imposing the system has been highly successful in reducing accidents and deaths in Riyadh, the Eastern Province and Jeddah,” said Brig. Abdul Rahman Al-Muqbil, Supervisor General of Saher, at the First Forum for Traffic Safety in the Eastern Province. __
