Investment obstacles in drug addiction treatment in Saudi Arabia
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Investment obstacles in drug addiction treatment in Saudi Arabia Nasser Abdulrahman Alodhailah1
Received: 2 April 2019 / Accepted: 21 January 2020 Ó Bharati Vidyapeeth’s Institute of Computer Applications and Management 2020
Abstract Healthcare in Saudi Arabia incurs huge expenditure to the government as the public hospitals and clinics constitute about 80% of all health infrastructure. This is creating problems in funding a number of specialized healthcare units like those for treating and managing drug addiction. This paper seeks to examine the investment obstacle in drugs addiction treatment in Saudi Arabia. To support and conclude our findings, we have carried out a survey of various government and private hospitals and health centers in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. A descriptive approach was applied to analyses the collected data. We found out that the government policy of offering free services in public hospitals, costing a large part of the government budget is responsible for most of the problems to fund specialized health programs like that of drug addicts. We hope our findings in this paper can be used by the public and private health sectors for having a balanced approach to healthcare without draining the public funding. Keywords Healthcare Public Obstacles Drugs Addiction Treatment Private Budget Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
1 Introduction Annual budget of 2017 has allocated about 14% of the total expenditure [1]. This represents a very high percentage as compared to many other countries. For example, the total & Nasser Abdulrahman Alodhailah [email protected] 1
spending in the US annual budget of 2015 constituted less than 6%. Table 1, extracted from [2], shows number of the public and private sector American hospitals for the year 2015 [2]. Compare this with the public sector hospitals percentage in 2011 in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) which accounted for 79% of all hospitals and health clinics. This shows a huge difference between public expenditure on hospitals in the two countries. Because of higher dependency on public health system, some specialized care and treatment do not get adequate funding. One such area is that the Drug addiction. This paper seeks to examine the funding problems for drugs addiction treatment. Managing and containing drug addiction is a duty of the governments in their countries. According to [3], treating drug addiction is not an event, but a process. Establishing sobriety is a necessary step, and in order to recover, both individuals and healthcare institutions face several challenges. Over the past few decades, the level of health sector investment in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been rising drastically. The sharp developments in health care have attracted World Health Organization (WHO) attention [4]. Health state budget has also increased to sustain radical developments and resolve challenges that health care encounters. Health care is of great importance to Saudi nationals, and this elucidates reason behind th
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