Saudi Gazette report

 

HAIL – There are 38 comprehensive rehabilitation centers in the Kingdom. Each center is capable of taking around 100-1,000 disabled individuals for treatment.



In comparison, there are around 1.5 million disabled individuals in the country whose families continue to complain about the lack of government-run comprehensive healthcare services for their beloved ones, despite orders by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah, to provide those disabled with such services.



Al-Riyadh newspaper interviewed some families who have disabled children about the problems they face. They complained that public rehabilitation centers do not offer intensive physiotherapy sessions. Besides, once disabled individuals begin to show signs of improvement, the centers discharge them without checking whether the individuals might relapse and need more sessions.



The families go through the hassle of traveling long distances to take their disabled children to private rehabilitation centers that cost them an arm and leg. They, together with their disabled sons/daughters, are more prone to poverty than others, because in the long run, they cannot continue to foot hefty medical bills.

 

Endless suffering



Umm Muhammad Al-Qa’ood, a divorcee, has a son with physical challenges. They both live in Riyadh. Her main problem is the cost of treatment and transportation. She encountered great difficulty every time she took her son to Al-Shumaisi Hospital, where he underwent physiotherapy for a short time. Doctors told Umm Muhammad her son could not be cured and there was no point of bringing him over to the hospital.



However, Umm Muhammad did not lose hope and took her son to a private rehabilitation center, but was shocked when she learned how much the physiotherapy sessions would cost her. She says she can never come up with such an amount of money. She is helpless and does not know what to do.

She is not the only one in Riyadh who complains about government-run rehabilitation centers. Umm Ghala is facing the same problem. She has a daughter with mental and kinetic disability, who needs more than one intensive physiotherapy session a week. But this is difficult, as only few centers are available. Private centers are not an option for her because she simply cannot afford them.



Full support



Unfortunately, several cities do not have enough rehabilitation centers for the disabled. Umm Khalid lives in Makkah and has to travel to another city to take her disabled child to a government center. She says appointments sometimes take up to seven months in some hospitals, which is a time long enough to drain the disabled’s family financially. Taking care of individuals with special needs can be exhausting and demanding, both mentally and physically, she says. In her opinion, social assistance allowance paid by the Ministry of Social Affairs for the disabled should be increased.



Umm Noura, from Al-Kharj, complained about the shortage of physiotherapists and lack of services for the disabled in public rehabilitation centers in Al-Kharj. As an old lady, she finds it extremely hard to help her 13-year-old disabled daughter around in daily activities. She cannot afford to take her daughter every week to Prince Sultan Bin Abdul Aziz Humanitarian City in Riyadh. It can cost her up to SR450 a day in transportation.

 

Services available by current centers



Sarah Al-Askar, director of disability rehabilitation center for women in Al-Kharj, says most centers determine the type and time of physiotherapy based on how critical the case is. She said the center in Al-Kharj only takes in individuals who suffer from severe disabilities. As for other categories, especially the ones that can be rehabilitated, they are not kept for a long time at the center because they don’t need to.



 Ministry of Social Affairs’ spokesman Khalid Al-Thebaiti said the ministry will only consider opening new centers when there is a need for that.