Prince Muhammad Bin Naser, Emir of Jizan region, has criticized the Ministry of Health for not completing the work on a medical tower, for undue expenditure on the out-of-date King Fahd Hospital and for a number of other shortcomings. Prince Muhammad made these observations during a review of the standard of health services in the region after the recent deaths of a female teacher, a young man and a baby girl due to medical errors. “The ministry is spending huge amounts of money on King Fahd Hospital although the facility has exceeded its life expectancy,” he said, according to reports published in the Arabic media Thursday. Prince Muhammad also said that he made scheduled visits to two of the region's health centers and found that there were no doctors in the two centers. The Emir also criticized the ministry for not finishing construction of the medical tower although work on the tower started many years ago. Prince Muhammad's criticism comes just three days after the Emir of Najran, Prince Misha'l Bin Abdullah, sent a letter to the Minister of Health Dr. Abdul Aziz Al-Rabeah criticizing the ministry's monopoly on supervising health projects in the region. Meanwhile, Undersecretary at the Ministry of Health for Planning and Development Dr. Muhammad Bin Hamaza Khoshaim has said that the ministry is building 125 hospitals in order to solve the problem of the shortage of beds in the Kingdom's hospitals.
