A state of confusion and paralysis is reportedly prevailing over the private sector health facilities in the country, following the decision by the Ministry of Health to authenticate the medical certificates and degrees of doctors and other medical personnel at these facilities.
The Ministry of Health is also understood to have stopped the program of bringing in visiting doctors until this issue is resolved.
The problem surfaced after some private health institutions signed contracts with medical personnel abroad to work at their facilities. But when they arrived in the country, the Ministry of Health insisted that they could work only after their certificates and degree were attested by competent authorities. So the medical personnel are now sitting idle while continuing to receive the salaries as per their contract with the private health facilities.
The owners of these private health facilities had opened new medical centers, dispensaries, clinics, pharmacies or laboratories and have to bear the financial burden in the form of rents for venues that are yet to open their doors and in paying salaries of people contracted to work, but unable to work.
The crisis took a further turn for the worse, when the health facilities hired doctors abroad to visit the country and attend to patients. Accordingly, they fixed appointments for the patients with the doctors who were scheduled to visit. But since the Health Ministry stopped the visiting doctors program, the owners of these facilities are in a fix with both, the doctors who they contracted to visit Kuwait and the patients who had signed up for appointments.
A clear solution to the problem is urgently required. Some health experts have called for the creation of a temporary supreme committees in the ministries of Health and Higher Education, to establish a mechanism to review the attestation process and, in the meantime, to ensure services are not disrupted in the essential health sector.
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