Malikis Health Care

Maliki Prioritises Health Care


Posted on 28 May 2013. Tags: healthcare, Maliki, Nouri al-Maliki



Pages: 1 2







By Omar al-Shaher for Al-Monitor. Any opinions expressed are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Iraq Business News.

Last week, despite the major political crises that have been ongoing
for several months now due to protests against his policies by his
opponents, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki seemed to show interest
in the issue of health care services in the country, stressing the
importance of advancing these services.

Over the past week, Maliki stressed twice the need to expedite the
completion of the construction of 10 hospitals in various Iraqi
provinces, each including 400 beds. Even though construction was
supposed to be completed by the end of the year, a number of these
projects have been delayed.

According to a governmental statement received by Al-Monitor, in a
meeting held at the end of last week with a number of senior officials
from the Ministry of Health at Maliki’s office, the latter gave them a
one-year time limit to complete the construction of these 10 hospitals,
asserting that he will hold all defaulting parties accountable.

It is worth mentioning that Iraq allocates an estimated $5 billion
annually to cover the needs of the health care sector, the
infrastructure of which is obsolete.

In this respect, the chairman of the Health Committee in the Iraqi
Parliament, Liqaa al-Yassin, indicated to Al-Monitor that the state
allocates around 5% of its budget to the health care sector, adding that
the Ministry of Health only spends around 55% of its share in Iraq’s
budget.

Yassin clarified that the current Iraqi infrastructure in public and
private hospitals is unable to provide special health care services,
indicating the need to encourage foreign and local investors to enter
the health care sector and build private hospitals fulfilling the
growing needs.



Pages: 1 2