As part of the health education program of the Ministry of Health, a program for family medicine will feature at the Health Information Center today.
Dr. Aisha As-Saheer, a family medicine consultant, will answer questions today from 10 a.m to 12 noon about health problems related to family medicine and about seasonal health problems during the summer. Assistant Director General for Parasitic and Infectious Diseases Dr. Amin Mishkas will answer questions from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m about the Kingdom's immunization program and the preventive measures against infectious diseases.
To use this service, call the toll-free number 8002494444.
Under this program, a spokesman said that the ministry targets 15,000 patients, who are currently getting treatment under its Home Health Care Program.
This is provided throughout the Kingdom in the form of curative, preventive, rehabilitative, palliative and counseling services.
The spokesman said it aims at providing a wide range of health care solutions at the patient’s doorstep. There are 940 health officials, who are divided into 216 teams working in the field in all parts of the Kingdom’s health regions to serve patients under this program. The health care services offered to these patients are linked to 138 hospitals spread throughout the Kingdom.
To qualify for treatment at home under this program, a physician should refer these patients. The patient should live within a radius of 50 km from a hospital and there should be a family member, who will attend to the patient in the house.
According to a survey, around 31 percent of the patients covered under the program suffered from chronic diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, cardiac and renal diseases.
Eighteen percent are Alzheimer’s and psychiatric patients, 14 percent paralytics, 11 percent suffer from diabetic foot diseases, five percent from chronic respiratory diseases, another five percent from urinary tract diseases and two percent from cancer.
The Riyadh region is ranked the first in the number of beneficiaries of the program, which has reached 12 percent of the patients in the Kingdom. It is followed by the Asir region (11 percent), Madinah (10 percent), Makkah (9 percent) and the remaining regions at varying proportions in accordance with the respective population, number of hospitals and beds in each region.
In April this year, the Health Ministry launched an awareness campaign to encourage people to provide the necessary vaccination to their children in time.
On this occasion, WHO Resident Representative in Riyadh Mostafa Tyane commended the efforts made under the leadership of King Abdullah in providing maximum health care services to the people in the Kingdom.
Tyane recalled that the Kingdom received a certificate from the WHO in 2007 that the country is free of polio. The last polio case was detected in 1995 in the Kingdom.
“This was a great achievement and the country has been taking many more effective efforts to reach its target in immunizing children against various other childhood diseases,” he said, adding that the Kingdom had reached a 98 percent target in its vaccination program.
Health education for 15,000 patients
