With the beginning of Ramadan, the charity race starts, to enable us to pursue our mission of protecting our children and realizing our dream of a cancer free childhood.
As is the custom, while wishing you a blessed month of Ramadan, we give you an account of all what has been accomplished during the elapsed year. We would not have been able to advance, to maintain the quality of care we offer our patients, raise the survival rate and eliminate the waiting lists without your continuous support.Thanks be to God we reached a survival rate of 71.4%. During the past months we received two prestigious accreditations, the first being the General Authority for Healthcare Accreditation and Regulation, GAHAR which was received upon their first audit with a success rate of 100%, for complying with all the accreditation standards. The second is the labs accreditation certificate from the College of American Pathologists, CAP, which is one of the highest accreditation certificates in the field of labs services. It is noteworthy that the Hospital is already accredited by the Joint Commission International, JCI, an accreditation that is renewed every 3 years.
Since we pursue to sustain the quality of care we provide to our patients, we are committed to continuous development, upgrading our equipment and enhancing our treatment protocols. One of the most important and latest equipment we acquired is the cyberknife, which is considered a leap in radiotherapy, and the new Pet-Ct in the cyberknife unit.
Among the new equipment we were able to provide for the renovation of the flow cytometry lab is the Navio EX flow cytometry equipment which contributes to rapid diagnosis, accurate determination of treatment protocols and enables an effective post chemotherapy follow up. The Automated Chemistry Analyzer is one of the biggest and most important acquired analysis equipment. It can carry out all the blood chemistry analysis automatically, performing 120 tests at the same time with utmost speed and accuracy. In addition a number of latest devices for the research department, operating rooms, brain tumor surgery unit, and intensive care unit were provided..
In the field of education and training, the pediatric oncology fellowship program in collaboration with Dana Farber Cancer Center, Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard University pursues the training of the ninth cohort of high level medical cadres. . The resident pharmacist program’s sixth cohort includes 15 students from Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The program obtained accreditation from the American Society of Health System Pharmacists, ASHP, as the first Hospital in Africa to receive the accreditation.
57357’s continuous education administration also offers a resident doctor program, Pharm-D, JCI diploma, radiotherapy fellowship program, and others.in the fields of nutrition, blood bank, infection control and nursing. These training programs are available for training work teams, from inside and outside the Hospital to raise the level of their capabilities.
With respect to research, we encourage all Hospital employees to engage in research work in all Hospital fields through the “professional scientist” initiative so that each employee becomes a researcher in his field. Every year, 57357 publishes a number of research studies in prominent scientific journals among which during the elapsed year: new markers for predicting a rare type of children’s cancer, diagnosing bones cancer through a type of proteins, discovering the reason behind the resistance of a type of bacteria to treatment, and others.
Expanding the emergency and the Bone Marrow Transplantation, BMT, departments:
Despite the harsh economic conditions the country is facing, we committed to completing some important projects that would enable us to preserve the continuity of our high quality services. The most important of these projects are the following:
- Expanding the BMT unit from 9 to 27 rooms, since BMT is a treatment for multiple types of difficult cancers with high risk of relapse such as leukemia, renal gland cancer, brain and eye cancers.
- Expanding the emergency department, as the department receives more than 2000 patients monthly, it was important to expand it to guaranty the continuity of offering quality emergency services, and guarantee highest standards of infection control.
Paid surplus services to increase the Hospital’s income:
With a tough competitive charity market, we are obliged to stop depending on donations as the only source of income. We started a group of projects to provide additional income to support the Hospital operation, such as the cyberknife unit. The cyberknife is a robotic radiotherapy device which is considered a leap in the treatment of cancers as it enables high precision treatment of deep tumors that exist in hard to reach areas with the least number of sessions, while protecting surrounding tissues. The device is used for treating children for free, and for treating adults, from outside the Hospital, for a revenue. There is also a number of paid outpatient clinics for adults, under the supervision of a group of best doctors and consultants in different medical specialties. Hence a larger number of patients would be able benefit from the Hospital’s quality services advanced equipment, technologies, labs and imaging devices. These services are offered for competitive prices, compared to other medical centers, and the income contributes to the treatment of our children with cancer. Among these clinics, a specialized nutrition clinic, gastroenterology and fatty liver clinic, chest and lung tumors clinic, pap smear clinic, men’s health clinic.
We are committed to exert all efforts to keep offering our quality services with high quality, since we believe that God entrusted us with their care and wellbeing.
Our commitment towards our children is not restricted to the provision quality medical care, but we believe it is their right that we make them happy and to help them live normally throughout their treatment journey.
Thank you for your trust and your support to our children,
Verse 48 of Sourat Elmaeda, “so race to [all that is] good. To Allah is your return all together”
And in Sourat Albaqara “and whatever good you put forward for yourselves – you will find it with Allah. Indeed, Allah of what you do, is Seeing”.