Press Review of the Week
16th January 2012
The oil producer countries such as GCC’s ones, whereby the state “assumes primary responsibility for the welfare of its citizens”, had implemented since 1970 an extended social system. Albeit nowadays this very system is showing is weakness front of the new plague of non-communicable diseases…
According to International Diabetes Federation, diabetes in MENA is expected to double from 366 million in 2011 to 552 million by 2030. By 2030, 11 percent of residents will be living with diabetes while six out of the world’s top ten countries with the highest prevalence of diabetes are in the MENA region. The burden of providing care is soaring1 whereas on the other hand the countries are rolling out plans to extend mandatory insurance : in 2009, Saudi Arabia rolled out mandatory health insurance for expatriates and nationals, in 2006, Dubai did the same with the support of private sector to provide medical insurance and announced last October to extend mandatory insurance to every employee in the emirate for next year.
If you look at the way the healthcare systems are structured they can’t continue in the future. There will be more patient co-payment.
Moreover, we are not surprised to read in the ArabianBusiness that new graduates protest in the street against state plans: 14,000 doctors and nurses are appointed in private hospitals where salaries are poorer than those available in public sector. In Jordan, it is quite the contrary, the public sector physicians are on strike for salary raise…
- The cost of treating diabetes costs the Middle East $5.5bn annually and accounts for 14 percent of their total healthcare expenditure. [↩]
