Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Ramadan 17, 1445 H
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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Oman's Medical Health City to be ready by 2021

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To be completed by 2021, the Medical City project will help the government to save costs and emerge as a hub for research and development in the field of medicine.


Dr Ahmed Mohammed Obaid al Saidi, Minister of Health, ha said that the expansion and easy accessibility of the health services are one of the priorities of the government under the vision ‘Health 2050’, which has led to the establishment of a medical city.”


The Medical City will accommodate several existing sub-specialties in the addition to the new services that will be offered at the property. On completion, the Medical City will ensure the availability of quality healthcare services to most people in the Sultanate, the minister said.


Spread on over an area of 5 million sqm in Barka, the Medicl City will comprise several specialty hospitals consisting of about 1,200 beds.


The medical city will facilitate training and education within the country, thereby cutting on the expenditure incurred by sending medicine students spent abroad for the same purpose.


Al Said, the City will help improve the level of training and Continuing Medical Education (CME) for healthcare professionals, and will also promote the scope for clinical research in priority areas.


The Minister said the medical city project will be also the is the first step in the direction towards developing has a hub for medical tourism, which will provide specialized medical care and offer complete infrastructure for training, research and studies and provide specialized medical consultations.


The minister said that there were 1,124 private institutions at the end of 2016, including 19 hospitals, 310 specialized clinics, 251 dental clinics, 48 ​​Chinese medicine clinics and 27 medical laboratories, seven medical diagnosis centers and around 11,634 employees of which 2,134 were physicians – 44 per cent of them  specialist physicians, 868 dentists, 1,798 pharmacists and 3,515 physicians


The ministry grants licenses to the healthcare workers following a process of written and oral tests to ensure their eligibility.


He said the expenditure of the Ministry of Health amounted to RO792.96 million for 2016 of which RO757.96 million is for operational purposes and RO 35 million for development expenditure.


The percentage of Omani doctors in the Ministry of Health is 33 per cent, compared with that of nine percent in 1990, followed 74 per cent among dentists and 87 per cent among pharmacists.


There were nine doctors for a population of 10,000 two decades back in the 1990 compared to 19.5 doctors for every 10,000 in 2016. The number of nurses for a population increased 26 in 1990 to 44.8 in 2016.


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