73% critical of healthcare services in Gulf region

HEALTH VIEWS: A majority of Arabian Business were critical of healthcare services in the Gulf in our online poll. (Getty Images)

More needs to be done to improve the quality of healthcare services in the Gulf region, according to the results of an Arabian Business poll.

Nearly 75 percent of respondents to our online survey were critical of the care they had received while only four percent thought services ranked alongside anywhere else in the world.

We ran our website vote after it was revealed that vital medical treatments were being delayed or cancelled at hospitals across the Middle East because of a global shortage of radioactive imaging agents.

Hospitals have received less than half their normal supplies of technetium-99, a key ingredient in more than 80 percent of routine diagnostic nuclear imaging tests.

The shortage has delayed treatment for hundreds of patients who are still waiting to undergo diagnostic heart and bone scans and some cancer detection procedures and the shortfall is expected to continue until mid-October.

And our survey revealed that a total of 73 percent of respondents thought this was just one example of a healthcare service that was not up to scratch.

Of those, 23 percent said they thought the doctors they had seen were rude and treatments had been substandard. Another 48 percent said that healthcare in the region was a lottery and the standard of care depended on where you lived.

Only four percent of people thought healthcare provided locally was excellent, with respondents believing it compared favourably with services around the world.

A further 23 percent of respondents said that while they thought the quality of care was good, there was room for improvement.

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