King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center hosted a medical symposium to discuss important medical issues afflicting the Kingdom. King Faisal Foundation (KFF) in collaboration with Al-Faisal University organized the symposium on Saturday, marking the 30th year of the King Faisal International Prize. Eleven of the Faisal Medicine Prize winners spoke about the common problems ailing the Kingdom, such as increasing rates of hepatitis, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and breast cancer. The panel of doctors used the symposium as a springboard to demonstrate the obstacles and breakthroughs of their medical research, covering topics of particular concern in Saudi Arabia, such as trauma burn care/management, HIV/AIDS (its history and future), cardiac diseases and diabetes. Other issues discussed at the symposium, held at Prince Salman Auditorium at King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center, included the high rate of burns in the Kingdom as well as the health risks associated with the spread of Hepatitis B and D. The winners of this year's Faisal prize in the field of trauma management gave the King Faisal International Prize Memorial Lecture during the assembly. Speaking about burn wounds and trauma management, Dr. Basil A. Pruitt Jr., a 2008 Faisal Medicine Prize winner, gave a staggering statistic: injuries from burns accounts for 500,000 people in the United States compared to 27,000,000 in the rest of the world. Burn wounds can typically arise from the simplest of household items or activities, such as spilling hot water on oneself when making tea. Whereas the US has almost 5,000 deaths a year as a result of burn-related injuries, the rest of the world has over 1 million. The panel then discussed the issue of trauma management and how numbers of fatalities from these burn-related injuries could be avoided as well as other interesting points. The annual presentation of the King Faisal International Prize enables the Foundation to reward dedicated men and women whose contributions make a positive impact. The Prize is awarded in the fields of: Service to Islam, Islamic Studies, Arabic Language and Literature, Medicine and Science. This year, King Abdullah, the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques was selected for the Service to Islam Prize. Attending the Faisal Awards ceremony here Sunday, were all the prizewinners through the entire 30 years of the Prize. __
