Addressing the Burden of Non-communicable Diseases: Saudi Arabia’s Challenges in Achieving Vision 2030

Abstract

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) pose critical challenges in achieving Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030. This paper provides an overview of NCDs in Saudi Arabia and identifies various critical issues and challenges in reducing the burden of NCDs. All relevant data for this paper was extracted from existing published literature in various database including Medline, Scopus, ScienceDirect and PubMed. Google Scholar search engine was used to identify papers and reports on relevant literature published after the year 2000. NCDs account for about 73% of all deaths in Saudi Arabia. Deaths due to cardiovascular diseases account for 37% of all deaths, cancers 10%, diabetes mellitus 3% and other NCDs cause 20% of all deaths. Economic costs of NCDs likely to increase with the undesirable life style of youths and increasing share of old population. Further, the shortage of local health workforce, lack of primary health care focus and covid-19 pandemic are likely to affect the government efforts to prevent and control NCDs. Ministry of Health (MOH) needs to play a catalyst role in raising awareness of population through multi-sectoral linkages and policies to reduce the exposure to NCD risk factors. There is a need to review all relevant policy documents to ensure consistency of these policies with prevention and control measures of NCDs.

Healthcare Transformation in Saudi Arabia: An Overview Since the Launch of Vision 2030

“…The government intends to utilize this share in Public Private Participation (PPP) healthcare projects to accomplish the Vision 2030 target of privatizing 295 hospitals by 2030 to boost quality and efficiency of healthcare sector for a value-based model of care. 4 , 18…”

“…Additionally, geriatric related care, rehabilitation and home healthcare for population beyond the age of 60 years is projected to increase. 4 , 14 It is anticipated that for Kingdom to be able to catch-up with the population growth an additional 20 000 beds would be required by 2035 and based on global average bed density, in 2016 a gap of 14 000 beds was observed and this gap is projected to grow by 40 000 beds by 2035. 14…”

“… 1 , 3 , 12 There exists significant gaps in the quality of patient-services due to lack and / or limited standardization of protocols and treatment pathways that is further exacerbated by unwarranted variation in provision, access and investment when assessed using the population served rather than the patient treated, which includes both ‘over-use’ as well as the ‘under-use’ leading to significant deficits in value as well as quality. 4 , 21…”

Health System Financing: A Comparative Analysis of India and Saudi Arabia

“…These results suggest that, if India needs to accomplish higher health outcome indicators, it needs to invest heavily in different programmes and schemes that can improve health service outcomes and health status of the population. KSA is consistently spending a higher amount on healthcare as reflected in the share of healthcare expenditure on GDP; however the Kingdom still faces the key challenges related to health workforce and reduction in NCDs when compared to other middle- and high-income countries (Albejaidi & Nair, 2021a, 2021b).…”