Medical students enrolled in ‘parallel education' programs in Saudi universities will henceforth study for free. Their tuition fees will be paid by the government as a result of an order issued by Crown Prince Sultan Bin Abdul Aziz. The ‘parallel education' program was introduced for students wanting to study Medicine but do not make it to the merit list for free education. Under the program introduced six years ago, students would pay half the tuition fees and the Ministry of Higher Education would pay the remaining half. The program started with 140 parallel students admitted to the College of Medicine. Later King Faisal University and the College of Education at the King Fahd Medical City joined the program to admit parallel education students. According to Al-Madina Arabic daily, tuition fees for each male or female student in the parallel program are SR50,000 per year for six years, or SR300,000 for their entire medical education. Crown Prince Sultan ordered that the State to pay the full cost of tuition after receiving requests from medical students in parallel education. The measure is expected to see a rise in the number of Saudi students studying Medicine. There is an increasing demand for Saudi doctors as the number of medical facilities is increasing throughout the Kingdom. With the Kingdom's population growing at 3.2 percent annually, growth in the health insurance market is helping to spur development in the health sector, which is considered by the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority as one of the six pillars of the economy. The mandatory health insurance scheme is now in its final phase which will cover some 16 million Saudi citizens. It is now mandatory for Saudi employers to provide medical insurance cover for their expatriate employees. Average annual health spending Saudi Arabia is SR30 billion – 75 percent by the government and only 25 percent by the private sector. Regionally, the Saudi health sector is one of the largest in terms of size, activity, and potential. According to a 2007 report by Booz Allen Hamilton, an aging but increasingly wealthy population is seeking specialty health care treatment from the private sector. Combined with the sharply growing population, expected to rise from 23 million today to 30 million by 2016 and demand for hospital beds increasing from 51,000 to 70,000 in the same period, the opportunities facing the private health sector are immense.
