Fatima Muhammad Saudi Gazette JEDDAH – A meeting was held here Saturday at Erfan & Bagedo General Hospital between insurance companies, the hospital management and an eight-member committee from the Ministry of Health. The meeting, described as touchy, discussed the status of in-patients and regular patients with chronic diseases who are still at the hospital and have not been transferred due to the severity of their conditions and lack of beds in the city's private and public hospitals. While the MoH committee is insisting that all cases should be moved to other hospitals a source told Saudi Gazette that the insurance companies were demanding the MoH to find beds for their patients, especially for the regular critical cases and those admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Patients paying from their own pockets have also been asked to leave the hospital and get beds at other hospitals. Another challenge is patients whose treatment expenses are being met by charitable sources. Many of these patients are non-Saudis, who cannot be moved to other hospitals except after getting approval for admission, a process that takes time, said a source. “We are not sheep, we cannot be forced out of here!” said an angry man whose aged mother is in the ICU. He said that his mother's condition is now stable and he will not take the risk of moving her anywhere else. Mariam Al-Subai, a Saudi patient, said: “We have been informed that we have to leave the hospital and look for alternatives. Where shall we go?” Many of the patients at the dialysis center are overage people who come thrice a week to have four-hour sessions. Regular patients, who have been treated at the center for periods that range from 10 months to several years, have a number of health issues. Sami Al-Ahmadi, a Saudi national accompanying his aged mother, said that due to her age and health condition hospitals will not be willing to accept her. “My mother has been visiting doctors here since a long time; where shall I take her?” An elderly woman, who visited Erfan hospital for her regular dialysis session on the day of the closure of the hospital, is now in the ICU of another private hospital. “My mother is a regular patient at Erfan hospital. On the day of the closure we brought her to have her regular session at the dialysis center. We were shocked to know that she could not consult her doctor. We took her to two private hospitals in Jeddah, one of which did not accept the case. When we reached the other hospital it was too late. The heart and the lungs had almost stopped. While the heart was revived with emergency procedures, the lungs did not respond,” said her worried daughter. Sami Badawood, the director of the Health Affairs in Jeddah, said that no unidentified cases are still kept at Erfan hospital. The number of kidney patients receiving treatment at Erfan hospital has been brought down from 140 to only 40. Badawood added: “We are coordinating to find places for (kidney failure patients) that are even better than Erfan. If no alternative is available then the cases will receive medical care at Erfan until they are provided with an alternative arrangement.”
