Within the framework of the National Project for an Integrated and Comprehensive Health Care aiming at realizing the principles of justice, equality, and inclusiveness in terms of distributing the health services, and its easy access and affordability, and through the follow-up and interest of his Excellency the Minister of Health, Dr. Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz Al-Rabeeah, the Ministry of Health (MOH) succeeded in recruiting 2087 consultant physicians with prestigious qualifications from inside and outside the Kingdom, over the years from 1431H to 1434H. They were temporarily recruited in order to work for the Kingdom's hospitals as part of the medical support, and this is in light of the difficulty and inadequateness of permanently recruiting consulting physicians in some specialties, due to their rarity at the moment.
Meanwhile, the MOH Undersecretary of Hospital Affairs, Dr. Aqeel Al-Ghamdi, said that the recruited group of the consulting physicians holds high qualifications on rare subspecialties such as kidney and urinary tract surgery, bone and joint surgery, neurosurgery and spinal surgery, plastic surgery and burn reparation, oral and maxillofacial surgery, anesthesiology, recovery, internal medicine, gynecology and obstetrics, cardiac diseases, children's infectious diseases, children's dental diseases, newborn diseases, kidney diseases, ENT diseases, endocrine diseases, digestive system and liver diseases, diagnostic radiology, and emergency medicine.
Further, Dr. Al-Ghamdi pointed out that those temporarily recruited are from the United States, Sweden, Australia, the United Kingdom, Jordan, Egypt, and Pakistan. As such, the Supportive Agency for Hospital Affairs has distributed these consulting physicians to the regions' hospitals, according to their medical specialties, and in line with the community needs, based upon the analytical study for the plan of the Supportive Agency for Hospital Affairs.
Within the same vein, Dr. Al-Ghamdi has affirmed that the Ministry of Health (MOH) is to keep up its strenuous efforts in terms of recruiting distinctive, high caliber consulting physicians; in order to meet the health needs of citizens and community, and that coordination is afoot with regard to temporarily recruiting another group of consulting physicians in several rare subspecialties from several countries, with the aim of abridging the remainder of the hospitals' needs and realizing the health needs properly. This is in order to upgrade and boost the health services provided to citizens in the places where they live, enable the community individuals to receive the health services which they need, limit the difficulties faced by some patients during frequenting the central hospitals and spare them the sufferings and hardships of travelling.
It is noteworthy to point out that the total number of physicians who were recruited locally is 723 consulting physicians whereas the number of physicians who were recruited from foreign countries is 1364 consulting physicians.