The MOH Assistant Undersecretary for Preventive Medicine Dr. Khalid A. Al-Zahrani emphasized the importance of evaluating the progress of work at the Sanitary Cities Program, which is carried out by the Ministry of Health in coordination with the World Health Organization (WHO). The works of the project are undertaken by MOH through an independent management for ensuring effective utilization of the efforts exerted in this regard within the different cities of the Kingdom.
Al-Zahrani addressed on Monday a workshop organized under his patronage at the Saudi center for Organ Transplantation in Riyadh. The activities of the workshop titled "Describing the Sanitary City and its Indicators for the Sanitary Cities Program" will continue for 3 days during the period from 17 to 19/10/1428H.
He said MOH acts as a mediator between the concerned community and the program management, denoting that the program's success depends basically on community feed back. "We need to know the yields of the steps already made", he said. "The title of the workshop is very expressive since it implicitly refers to the importance of identifying the sanitary and environmental difficulties confronted in sanitary cities.
The MOH Director General of Preventive Health and National Coordinator of the Health Cities Program Mr. Falah bin Fahad Al-Mazroo said the officials at the Sanitary Cities Program has carried out their responsibilities in coordination with the World Health Organization. They were in this way able to cover 23 cities throughout the Kingdom. According to the reports of the World Health Organization the example of the Kingdom has been the best compared to all other countries of the Eastern Mediterranean region.
He attributed the success attained to the support and patronage offered by the government and the community initiatives, reminding that the program is basically a community oriented program supported by the World Health organization.
He said the workshop aims at identifying the specifications and indicators of sanitary cities. "The Assistant Secretariat for Preventive Medicine, represented by the General Directorate of Sanitary Cities (The Sanitary Cities Program) has conducted in 1428 a survey study on sanitary cities for establishing a database for each city", he said. "Such a database is supposed to help in the efforts of formulating effective sanitary plans for each city on the basis of their sanitary indicators and relative issues".