Assistant Agency for Primary Health Care

 

In 1978, in the international conference held in Alma-Ata (Almaty) of the Soviet Union, it was announced that "the health care is the key to achieve the health for all". Also, the principles of the primary healthcare were defined as a set of instructive values for the health development, as well as having the essential elements involved been set. They include the therapeutic, preventive, and rehabilitative services, in addition to health-boosting services. Similarly, these principles see that the health is not only restricted to treating the disease, but also, broadly speaking, includes the physical health, psychological health,  emotional health, and the community health as a whole.

 

Proceeding from the directives of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, May Allah protect him, in terms of securing high-quality  comprehensive and integrated health services for all the citizens of this giving country, the Ministry of Health (MOH) is interested in providing the primary healthcare services. As a result, the number of the current healthcare centers reached up to 2259 ones, as well as initiating 911 new ones in the last six years. Even more, the MOH works on restoring all its centers rented in the governmental model buildings specially designed for delivering the primary healthcare services. When designed, it was taken into consideration the latest global standards, along with guaranteeing the reference circulation movement smoothness and paying attention to the community customs and conventions, and our Islamic religion teachings. So far, the restoration project has included 1671 health centers; 824 ones out of them have finished and have been operated. The remainder are being implemented and tendered over several stages.     

  

Thanks to the MOH's focus on the primary healthcare services, expanding them, and upgrading their services, the patients' visit number to the health centers amounted to more than 54 million ones annually.

 

The nursing pattern change in the Saudi community and what it sees in terms of receding in the infectious diseases spread and increasing in the chronic diseases spread and the population ages pose a major challenge for the health system in the Kingdom in general, as it goes for the rest of the world's states, as well as its being a challenge for the primary healthcare in particular.

 

In that spirit and for materializing the citizens' expectations and needs regarding the health services in the primary healthcare centers in order for these services to cope with the latest developments in the primary healthcare field in the developed countries, the MOH set an integrated strategy to advance the primary healthcare services and redirect them in a way that goes with the health situation in the Kingdom and the global trends in that field. This involves providing them with consulting physicians and specialists in the family medicine field and the other health specialties; in order to enable the citizens to get high-quality comprehensive health services by efficient health workers, close to their domiciles.