According to the Eastern Health Affairs, Al-Khafji General Hospital - with its 100-bed capacity - features a great dynamic service development. Recently, the new GlideScope has been introduced. It is a video laryngoscope system which is ideal for difficult airways, and emergency situations in the field. The hospital's emergency department received last year 150 thousand outpatients. The new device will boost the professional efficiency to deliver ambulatory services after due training of emergency doctors, anesthesiologists, and surgeons on using it. The new apparatus is a wise addition, and facilitates handling sophisticated cases.
Likewise, the development of Al-Khafji General Hospital involves launching a permanent psychiatric clinic to serve the province's population. In addition, a permanent clinic for root canal and nerves - a highly demanded one – has been introduced, with 4,341 dental outpatients visiting the hospital last year.
It is worth noting that the Anti-Smoking Program - Al-Ahsa served 1,174 individuals wishing to quit smoking in 1438H., with 28% of registered persons already quit smoking. Also, the program organized 115 awareness activities over 130 days in the same year.
It is also noteworthy that the Ministry of Health, in line with its contribution to achieve the target of the National Transformation Program 2020, has launched the initiative of (reforming and restructuring the primary healthcare), as part of 40 initiatives designed to develop and improve the Kingdom's healthcare services and facilities to meet the needs of the community and the expectations of our righteous leader - may Allah protect him.
This new initiative aims to provide advanced outstanding primary healthcare services, to boost satisfaction with this sector's services, and to foster the outpatients' trust in health services. The initiative also seeks to restore confidence in primary healthcare centers, given the growing numbers of outpatients, to ensure accessibility to all beneficiaries to reduce the burden on different health professionals, to boost the preventive measures, and provide facility-based health services, in addition to reducing congestion on emergency departments and outpatient clinics.
MOH has recently launched the new design templates of primary healthcare centers at As-Sulaimaniyah, Al-Wadi, Al-Khaleej, Al-Murabba and Al-Mansourah. All are model centers. Also, all MOH's centers will be rehabilitated with similar templates. New centers will be set up. The news centers will provide all preventive, health and community services, while complying with CBAHI's standards. The services include consultation clinics, primary mental clinics, as well as other services such as immunization, maternity care, family medicine and early detection of chronic diseases. Also, the community will be engaged by creating community council to take part in planning health services. Each center will incorporate a training center for family medicine fellowship with a unified e-record database. The new centers feature a modern architectural style the required safety supplies. It’s noted that the work is currently underway to start the stage of mega centers according to MOH-approved medial facility identity.