Al-Qunfudah Healthcare Centers provided their preventive and therapeutic services to 1,215,024 patients last year, including 869,976 patients at general clinics, 16,053 at consultation clinics, 59,094 at dental clinics, 29,175 at elderly care, as well as 29,280 laboratory tests, 149,475 chronic diseases, 8,280 maternity care, 53,013 pediatric care and 696 x-ray tests. These services were provided through 43 healthcare centers.
It is noted that triage clinics were inaugurated at the emergency department of Al-Qunfudah General Hospital. The service was moved to a new site at the gate of the hospital temporary building, including optical triage clinic, adult and children emergency clinic, respiratory cases triage rooms and male and female rest rooms.
On the other hand, the Ministry of Health (MOH) has recently started implementing the second phase of the National Program for Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) Detection and Treatment. As well, MOH has launched an awareness campaign entitled (Give Your Hand), which features several awareness materials to be posted on social media. “During the past two years, MOH has provided a number of quality drugs to treat HCV, while giving priority to sophisticated cases or those transmitting infections to other. The introduction of locally produced world-class drugs has help expand the scope of treatment in an unprecedented way; thus, removing priority barriers. In addition, the Program trains both doctors and coordinators, and provides lab and radiology test, as well as the logistic services needed for its implementation.
It is noteworthy that hepatitis C virus (HCV) causes both acute and chronic infection. Acute HCV infection is usually asymptomatic. About 15–30% of infected persons spontaneously clear the virus. The remaining will develop chronic HCV infection, which may lead to cirrhosis or liver cancer in some cases. HCV can be cured using new direct-acting antiviral medicines recently made available, which have proven effective with more than 95% recovery percentage. However, there is no vaccine for hepatitis C.