MADINAH — The Al-Amal hospital for mental rehabilitation here receives an average of 60 drug addicts every week but is unable to accommodate them all, its director said. “The hospital's capacity is 50 beds while every week we receive more than 60 drug addicts who are in need of admission,” Sahal Nur told Al-Hayat newspaper. He said some of these cases were referred to the hospital by security authorities while some others come on their own seeking treatment. “We suffer from an acute shortage of beds while a large number of drug addicts commute to us seeking treatment,” he added. Nur said the hospital was built on an area of 180,000 sq. meters with a capacity of 200 beds, of which only 50 were allocated for drug addicts. “We will open a special section for the drug addicts when we have enough beds and a sufficient number of specialist medical doctors,” he said. The director said as a temporary solution to the shortage of beds, the hospital tends to discharge the addicts who are showing signs of recovery to accept new ones in their place. Nur said there are about 55,000 people with psychological issues in the region and added that during the past few months as many as 12,000 patients visited the outpatient clinics while 13,000 visited the emergency ward. He said the Department of Social Affairs always refuses to accept mentally ill patients out of fear that they may cause trouble in their social protection homes. He said: “In this case, the recovered patients come back to us for accommodation. “We admit them to the convalescence section, which is too small to accommodate them all.” The director said there were only six mental rehabilitation clinics in the entire region despite the large number of patients in need of treatment and medical care. He said a 200-bed mental hospital would soon be established in Yanbu. “This new facility will reduce the burden on the main hospital in Madinah,” he said.
