Healthcare | Friday 6 February, 2015 2:08 am |

A standard medical test used by all six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries have seen them block 95 percent of unfit workers from entering their territory, said Saudi Health Minister Ahmad Al-Khateeb on Wednesday.

Al-Khateeb said the GCC had previously only been able to block 70 percent of workers who were not medically capable of taking up jobs for which they were recruited.
The newly appointed minister revealed these statistics during his keynote address at the two-day 78th conference of the GCC Health Ministers Council, which ends on Thursday.
“It is by far one of the lowest levels in the world, but we are looking to reducing it further,” Al-Khateeb told reporters following the opening session.

He said the success of this testing initiative would be followed up by developing a joint medical database of all workers entering the GCC. He praised the member countries for having cooperated on several key measures including joint purchases of medicines.

Health ministers from the GCC have gathered here for the conference to discuss the development of health systems under the theme: ‘Measuring Health Systems: Way to Excellence.’

In his address, Abdullatif Al-Zayani, secretary-general of the GCC, said that Gulf countries are committed to improving health services for their citizens. “This was evident by many of the decisions taken to develop the health sectors in their countries,” he said.

Kuwait’s health minister, Ali bin Saad Al-Obeidi, said that one of the impressive achievements of the GCC health ministers was the joint medicine purchases worth SR10.1 billion, which has helped to lower prices for citizens.

In his address, the director general of the executive office of the GCC health minister’s council, said that the development of health systems has been a priority of the World Health Organization (WHO) since 2000.

He said the WHO has advised countries to ensure that they have proper data gathering processes so that they can determine priorities and resource allocation.