A Shoura (Consultative) Council report has stressed that there was an acute shortage of therapeutic services in hospitals run by the Ministry of Health. The shortage is much glaring in primary health care centers across the Kingdom, the report said noting that the facilities fall short of the requirements of the inhabitants in provinces and regions. The report also touched on shortage of beds in public hospitals in proportion to the population noting that this explains the reason behind the difficulty doctors face in referring patients from such centers to public hospitals. “The ministry didn't try to tackle the problem of the waiting lists in hospitals and renal dialysis centers,” it said pointing that these drastic shortages in the ministry's services also apply to primary health centers where beds are limited. It said the situation was not better in intensive care units, cardiac departments and children's hospitals stressing that patients have complained about the acute shortage of beds and incubators. Laboratories run by the ministry, the report said, lack proper infrastructure putting the patients' lives under risk. The poor standard of cleanliness and maintenance in hospitals also came in for a rebuke in the report. It also urged the ministry to open ophthalmology centers all over the Kingdom. “The ministry's budget includes allocations for such projects besides generous allocations for improvement of the quality of the health services exist,” the report said. The Shoura urged more care to mental hospitals and psychiatric centers besides working out a plan to meet the growing demand for this type of service and attracting efficient cadres to work in this sector.
