RIYADH — Minister of Health Tawfiq Al-Rabiah opened an integrated dialysis center, the first of its kind in the Kingdom, in Riyadh on Tuesday. The center operated by Diaverum, which owns and runs dialysis clinics around the world, as part of a public-private partnership with the Ministry of Health will be ready to receive patients referred by primary healthcare centers by July. While speaking to Saudi Gazette, Dag Andersson, president and chief executive officer of Diaverum, shed some light on the center, which will provide dialysis services, vascular access and staff training. "There is very important partnership between us and the Saudi Ministry of Health. Both of us work for joint objectives, which is providing patient centric care. The patients who come to our centers will not pay anything, the ministry will pay for them," Andersson said. The center is divided into stations — every bed and machine is called a station. "One station can serve six patients if you work on a three-shifts strategy. The number of the patients any center can treat is closely linked to the number of stations the center has. This center has 30 stations, so theoretically you can treat 180 patients." Andersson said. Moving to a key aspect of this integrated center, which is the training of staff, Andersson said: "There are thousands of nurses in Saudi Arabia. However, they cannot work in specialized facilities because they lack certain qualifications or skills to be become specialized dialysis nurses. So we will have different training programs for different levels of nurses. For specialized nurses, we will give them our training that match our high quality level, and that will take six weeks. On the other hand, for unspecialized nurses, the training will take much longer and can reach six to nine months in our center." He continued: "Once they finish training and pass the exams, they can work in our centers where they will receive on the job training. It is a combination of theoretical and practical training. The current plan is to have around 700 nurse graduates from the training program. However, it is going to be in batches. The first training program will start at the end of April with a batch of about 30 female and male nurses. Due to the growing demand for our services, we got nurses from other countries to mix with Saudi nurses. So, we can have an excellent combination of local and international resources. That will help with job creation as well." Right now, the center is aiming to enroll bachelor level nurses. However, in the future there will be enrollment of diploma level nurses in line with the ministry's initiatives for diploma nurses to specialize in key medical areas to meet the increasing demand. Dialysis is one of these areas due to huge number of Saudis who suffer from diabetes, obesity and heart diseases, which are the main causes of kidney disease. "In Saudi Arabia, there is a huge number of people who have these main causes; 50 percent of people who are above 45 have diabetes. This is frightening because 40 percent of patients who receive dialysis have diabetes. So they are more likely to suffer from kidney diseases as they age," said Christina Sterner, chief commercial officer and managing director of Diaverum Sweden. Diaverum's previous centers in the Kingdom were only for dialysis. It opened the first center in Jeddah in July 2014. "Now, we have about 17,000 patients transferred to our centers from primary health centers. The percentage increases by 7 to 10 percent a year," Sterner said. The center plans to include one more vital department in the future. "There is a plan to have a preventive care center because if you can catch potential patient early on, you can delay dialysis by many years. That is a benefit for everyone. Preventive care is very important because it costs less than dialysis and help the patient as well," Sterner added.
