Muscat: The Ministry of Health (MOH) has released the Annual Health Report for 2020.
The report highlights the main services provided by the health sector in 2020 along with health & vital indicators and the sustainable development goals indicators.
The reports contain as well a brief for the most important MOH studies and researches over the past years.
The annual health report 2020 started with an introduction about the demographic and geographic features of the Sultanate in addition to the administrative structure and organization of the Ministry. Most of the health indicators are revealed in this report in a time series of the past years.
The report shows a description and development of the indicators related to various health fields of the Ninth Five-Year Plan and the achievements that have been made within the five years of the plan, in addition to an overview of the Tenth Five-Year Plan, its objectives, and related indicators.
The statistics indicate a change in the epidemiological map in the Sultanate as Coronavirus disease has changed the equation of the epidemiological change in the Sultanate similarly to the rest of the world. Therefore, the report showed high death rates due to communicable diseases.
The decrease in the use of health services in 2020 is attributed mainly to the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic. The number of outpatient clinics visits to MOH institutions in 2020 dropped to 10.5 million visits compared to about 15.7 million visits in 2019.
The average number of visits per Omani person to outpatient clinics reached (3.7) visits during the year 2020, which led to a decrease in the total number of discharged patients from MOH's health institutions to reach about 257,000 in 2020, with an average period of hospitalization (3.7) days of stay and 47.8 percent of bed occupancy rate.
The report also showed the various surgical operations that were performed at the theatre rooms of MOH's institutions, where the total number of surgeries reached about 52.7 thousand surgeries in 2020, at a rate of 11.4 surgery per 1,000 population.
The report includes further plenty of statistics on health services use such as admissions, radiology, and dialysis services, and others.
The MOH's Directorate General of Planning & Studies is the central body responsible for providing reliable accurate information and data for each planning, monitoring, and evaluation process in a timely manner thus contributing to the proper planning and decision-making procedures. Information is made available to all health workers in the various departments and sections.
Moreover, the Department of Information and Statistics is providing the Sultanate's health indicators to the international organizations and bodies including World Health Organization (WHO), The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), in addition to the academic and research centers.
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