The Kingdom needs SR10 billion in investments to train and prepare 10,000 qualified pharmacists, according to the Saudi Society for Pharmacology. Bandar Al-Hamwa, vice-chairman of the society told Al-Watan Arabic newspaper that at present there are 20,000 pharmacists working in 3,228 pharmacies across the country. Citing a recent pharmacology study, he said that 21 percent of 34,600 doctors working in the Kingdom are Saudis. Additionally, total of 68,069 nurses working in 340 hospitals provide care for the Kingdom's 26 million people. Last week, more than 90 undergraduate pharmacology students started training in Al-Nahdi Pharmacies, he said. The training program is for pharmacology students of King Abdul Aziz University, the Health College in Jeddah and other health colleges in the Eastern and Southern provinces. Al-Hamwa said women were not eligible for the program because of lingering social perceptions, since the vocation of pharmacist is widely seen as similar to that of a cashier. He said training men is the first step towards changing that point of view. He also said that the training step helps to increase implementation of the government's job localization policy. __
