In a humanitarian initiative reflecting its keenness to improve the quality of its health services, and provide the health care for all society members of different categories and segments, the Ministry of Health (MOH) will launch an initiative dubbed: “Musanadah” soon, which is a number of support services offices for serving people with disabilities.
The MOH has pointed out that these offices will provide logistics services for people with disabilities, starting with car parking, and passing by the services of opening medical files, making appointments, moving inside the health facility, and ending with getting medical reports. This is meant to promote the mechanism of providing the service, as well as enhancing the independency of those people with disabilities.
Furthermore, the MOH has pointed out that the support services offices for people with disabilities are seeking to achieve its mission, in terms of making all facilities to be friendly for people with disabilities; in an endeavor to bring them up to the highest levels of independency. This can be achieved by enabling them to meet the requirement of their health environment and developing their self-reliance capabilities; thus making them productive members in the society.
The MOH went on adding that the tasks of support services offices for people with disabilities include making sure on a daily basis of the appropriateness of the health facility to serve those people with disabilities (slopes of driveways, car parking, toilets, and elevators). The tasks also include helping people with disabilities move inside the health facility, finishing the procedures of opening medical files according to the system, setting up appointments, the coordination between patients and medical crew, getting the medical reports of persons with disabilities, and supporting the communication between people with hearing impairment and medical team (via sign language). The tasks also comprise the preparation of statistics about people with disabilities to enhance the Saudi National Disability Registry (SNDR), the coordination with the Person with Disabilities Services Coordination Committee for the issuance of transport discount card and transport facilities card, the communication with relevant authorities to offer people with disabilities their assistive devices, in addition to the coordination with the medical departments (pharmacy, laboratory, radiology, and medical rehabilitation,...etc.) to get priority.
It is worth mentioning that reports of the World Health Organization (WHO) indicate the presence of more than one billion people with disabilities around the world (at a rate of 15% of the total global populations), and even the number is increasing, according to the report.