Healthcare Workforce Essay: Saudi Arabia's Healthcare System

This essay examines the healthcare workforce in Saudi Arabia, focusing on the challenges and solutions related to the country's increasing life expectancy. The essay highlights the rising average life expectancy in Saudi Arabia and its impact on healthcare needs, including the projected increase in hospital beds required by 2050. It discusses the challenges of an aging population, such as a potential lack of qualified workforce and socioeconomic impacts. The essay outlines the Saudi government's responses, including increased healthcare spending, privatization of healthcare, and the implementation of e-health programs. Furthermore, it touches upon the long-term goals of Vision 2030, such as enhancing the number of qualified nurses and upgrading e-health record systems. The essay concludes that Saudi Arabia is taking effective measures to address the effects of an aging population on its healthcare system.

Running head: THE HEALTHCARE WORKFORCE
The Healthcare Workforce
Name of the student
Name of the University
Author Note

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In recent time, along with other countries of world, the average life expectancy of Saudi
Arabia has also increased with the time. In a survey it was observed that, within 2050, due to
average increase in the life expectancy of the people, almost 178,000 new hospital beds will be
required ( Bah, 2018). This essay will focuses on the increased life expectancy of Saudi Arabia
and related problems with this fact. In addition, the measures taken by the Saudi Government
will also be highlighted in this essay.
According to the Ministry of Health of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, it is noted that average
life expectancy in the Saudi Arabia has increased to 74.3 years that is higher by 6 years than that
of the average regional aging of Saudi Arabia. The life expectancy of Saudi male is almost 74
years, whereas the female counterpart has the average life expectancy of 77 years. Due to high
life expectancy of Saudi population, the number of elderly people will be increased to 9.5%
within 2035 ( MOH, 2019). In providing proper health care facilities to the ageing population,
Saudi Arabia will faces several challenges such as lack of qualified human work force, gradual
slowness in the socioeconomic growth of the country as well. The policy makers of the country
will also face difficulties to achieve the worldwide aim of successful aging ( Khoja et al., 2018).
As a part of their plan for combatting Saudi Arabia government has allotted more
Amount of money in the 2018 budget and according to this budget the amount for health care has
increased by 10% than that of the previous budget and it is almost $39.2 billion. Therefore
another major plan of the Saudi Arabia government to solve this issue of longevity in their health
care sector is the privatization of the health care sector and the government had decided to
privatize all the public hospital in the country in order to enhance the private-public partnerships.
As a part of their short term programs, the government has introduced the concept of e-health to
programs to enhance the service delivery to more number of people. In case of long term plan,

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the government of Saudi Arabia, under the Vision 2030 program, sets a few goals such as
enhancing number of qualified nurses, more privatization of the hospitals, up gradation of
infrastructure of the e- health record systems (Khoja et al., 2018).
Hence it can be concluded that, to fight against the effect of aging population on the
health care system, Saudi Arabia has taken some effective measures and they are on the right
way to achieve goals.

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References
Bah, S. (2018). How feasible is the life expectancy target in the Saudi Arabian vision for
2030?. Eastern Mediterranean Health Journal, 24(4), 401-404.
Khoja, A. T., Aljawadi, M. H., Al-Shammari, S. A., Mohamed, A. G., Al-Manaa, H. A.,
Morlock, L., ... & Khoja, T. A. (2018). The health of Saudi older adults; results from the
Saudi National Survey for Elderly Health (SNSEH) 2006–2015. Saudi Pharmaceutical
Journal, 26(2), 292-300.
MOH (2019). MOH News - MOH: 'Average Life Expectancy in the Kingdom Rises to 74.3
Years'. Moh.gov.sa. Available at:
https://www.moh.gov.sa/en/Ministry/MediaCenter/News/Pages/News-2016-11-03-
002.aspx [Accessed 26 Feb. 2019].