The Department of Protection against Radiation, which is part of the MOH General Directorate of Preventive Health, provides protection against exposure to ionized radiation for workers, patients, and the general public. It applies quality standards on radiation equipment and departments of nuclear medicine, controls radioactive isotopes within health facilities, and builds capabilities for control and prevention against exposure to radiation.
The Director General of Preventive Health Dr. Falah bin Fahad Al-Mazroo said this trend of MOH comes in line with its awareness of the hazards which might be imposed by radioactive materials on the environment and public health. It also comes in line with the instructions issued by King Abdul Aziz City for Science and Technology, the body responsible for dealing with radioactive materials and sources. MOH executes a number of programs in order to realize this goal, including periodical measurement of personal radioactive doses for workers at radioactive departments in all MOH health facilities by using radioactive card readers.
The radioactive survey program conducts periodical radioactive surveys for radioactive departments at all MOH health facilities to prevent radioactive leakages from radioactive chambers.
The program of controlling radioactive isotopes monitors nuclear medicine departments and hormone labs in order to ensure compliance with the instructions of protection against radiation. The quality program conducts standardization processes for radioactive equipment at MOH health facilities to ensure their efficiency. The program has 4 advanced quality control equipment for testing x-ray emitting resources. Also, at each of the MOH Health Affairs, officials of protection against radioactive emission, who obtain licenses from KACST, carry out the task of applying the requirements of the program at MOH health facilities.
Al-Mazroo said MOH works in coordination with KACST and other regional and international bodies such as the International Agency of Atomic Energy, the Arabic Commission of Atomic Energy, and WHO. Experts from such organizations are invited to the Kingdom for evaluating, revising and developing the status of radioactive prevention. MOH officials of radioactive prevention are also sent through the above organizations for training programs in some European countries, Australia, and New Zealand. Also, a free-lance consultant from KACST supervises the MOH radioactive prevention program.
He said MOH coordinates with relative bodies for formulating the regulations controlling radioactive prevention. It also coordinates with WHO for formulating the regulations controlling usage of LASER in the Kingdom.