Friday 29 March 2024
 
»
 
»
Story

Major healthcare projects planned in Bahrain

MANAMA, December 30, 2014

Millions of dinars will be invested in health centres and hospitals across Bahrain over the next 10 years, it was revealed yesterday (December 29).

The Health Ministry highlighted a number of upcoming projects and proposals in its year-end report, including a BD7-million ($18.4 million) diabetes care centre in Muharraq and BD11-million ($29.2 million) dialysis centre in Riffa.

“Bahrain is keen to develop its health services to take care of the needs of citizens and residents by improving access to primary and secondary healthcare,” said Health Minister Sadiq Al Shehabi.

“We have developed a strong healthcare infrastructure despite facing challenges such as high rates of chronic diseases, high medical costs and the cost of medications and an increase in the elderly population.”

A BD13.9-million ($36.9 million) long-term care facility for patients in Muharraq and a maternity hospital project were also in the offing, the minister said, as well as five new health centres to be set up in Qalali, Hamad Town, the Northern City, Askar and Riffa as part of the proposed plan until 2023.

Over the past year, BD28 million ($74.3 million) had been spent on the overseas treatment of Bahrainis - up from an initial estimate of BD6.75 million ($17.6 million) - and Salmaniya Medical Complex had dealt with a daily average of between 1,000 and 1,500 walk-in patients, the minister said.

From January to November, the hospital's Accident and Emergency department had dealt with 261,495 patients, with 15,666 surgeries performed and 5,116 babies born.

A total of 3.8 million visited the country's government health centres over the same period, with 11,430 attending smoking cessation clinics and 19,000 pints donated to the blood bank.

In terms of diseases recorded this year, there were 225 tuberculosis cases, 40 Aids cases and 220 people tested for suspected Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus, all of which came back negative.

Meanwhile, Al Shehabi said water quality had been inspected in 6,051 different locations such as schools, salons, hotels and gyms, with 2,961 unspecified violations recorded, 197 establishments fined and 14 shut down.

Health inspectors also checked a total of 742,928.312 metric tonnes of food imports, of which 991.808 tonnes was found to be unfit for human consumption.

The healthcare budget allocated by the government for 2014 was BD221 million including BD13 million for various projects, Al Shehabi added. - TradeArabia News Service




Tags: Bahrain | project | Healthcare | plan |

More Health & Environment Stories

calendarCalendar of Events

Ads