JEDDAH: Princess Adila Bint Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz, Chairwoman of the National Charity for Home Healthcare in the western region, has said that the Second Social Health Conference on Home Healthcare which opened in Jeddah Tuesday will help “improve all services provided to the public and reaffirm the importance of partnership between the health sector and charity organizations”. Princess Adila said that the recommendations from the first conference had been carried out by the relevant health authorities and that a national committee had been formed of representatives from all health sectors and the National Charity for Home Healthcare to improve the quality of home healthcare services. “The National Charity for Home Healthcare in the western region has drawn up a number of outlines for nursing diploma programs for home healthcare and presented them to King Abdulaziz University as the specialized academic body for coordinating with the Saudi Commission for Health Specialties and the hospitals with experience in this area,” she said. The princess praised the fatwa from the Board of Senior Ulema permitting the use of Zakat funds to help patients in need of home healthcare in order to provide them with treatment and medical equipment and build a database for home healthcare to help in gathering statistics, planning, and conducting academic research. She also praised the “considerable work” of the recently departed Muhammad Abdu Yamani for the organization and Abdullah Al-Rabeah, Minister of Health, for his patronage of the conference and concern for the development of health services in the Kingdom. Muhammad Khushaim, Deputy Minister of Health for Planning, speaking on behalf of the health minister, said that the provision of home healthcare to five thousand people was a project “equivalent to building 10 100-bed hospitals”. “The Ministry of Health has managed to provide health services for home healthcare to over 5,000 patients through 77 hospitals across the Kingdom in just the last year and a half,” Khushaim said. “There are no fewer than 48,000 persons in need of home healthcare in the Makkah region alone, and that number is set to increase as a result of the increasing age of mortality, as the number of persons over the age of 65 will go up from six to 12 percent in the next few years.” He said that the types of illnesses present would also change as the nation develops, with changes from stomach illnesses to “ailments of the developed world such as diabetes, cancer and others”. “The coverage for home healthcare only covers at the moment three percent of the need,” he said. Salim Al-Dhahi, chairman of the conference's scientific committee, said the conference would focus on global experience in home healthcare. “We will be discussing issues brought by those who provide home healthcare, issues of quality and cost, and the sort of patients that require that care,” Al-Dhahi said. “The conference will also look at training professionals who work in home healthcare, the role of the media and social responsibility in home healthcare.” Wa'il Ka'oush, chief executive of the Health Sector Development Holding Company, described the private sector as “having a great sense of responsibility towards home healthcare”. “In America and Germany there is an integrated system for the service which has great support from both the public and private sectors,” he said. “That sort of approach faces a lot of challenges, as the patient might not want to be transferred from hospital to home, and here lies the role of health workers in persuading the patient and in promoting awareness of the importance of providing care at home. The last ten years have seen the private sector give great support, as well as King Abdulaziz University, and the National Guard which have had a large part to play in home healthcare, as well as a number of centers that have specialized programs.” Walid Fitaihi, the chairman of the International Medical Center, emphasized the importance of social medicine for home healthcare as well as the support of the ministries of Health, Culture and Information, Social Affairs, and Labor, to “oversee scientific and moral support for Saudi nurses and inform them of the social role in a comprehensive perspective to provide service to sufficient numbers of home healthcare patients”. “Entering patients' homes requires emotional and moral intelligence,” he said.
