Improving eye health care infrastructure in Al-Jawf area

This project involves the construction of new eye care facilities together with the refurbishment of existing care centers to ensure that people in Al-Jawf (a small city at the north of Saudi Arabia) with eye problems have easy access to care services. The project recognizes that a lack of eye infrastructure in the Al-Jawf area is a significant barrier to the patients in need of eye care services. The primary aim of this project is to design and construct departments within the existing healthcare facilities where eye patients can be provided with quality care at an affordable cost. The initial phase of this project involved the determination of the problem being addressed, target population (approximately 150,000), the stakeholders and the financial resources necessary for project implementation. The interested parties in this project include the policy makers, project leader, project team members, sponsors, patients, functional managers, the providers and the hospitals. During the initial stages of the project, the project leader guided a team of members in brainstorming and integrating ideas to determine how best, the problem of minimal eye infrastructure in the communities can be addressed. It was proposed that refurbishing the existing care facilities to include an eye department as well constructing eye care facilities in the remote regions would facilitate the attainment of the project objectives. A prototype of the proposed infrastructure will be developed and tested to determine the feasibility of the project. After testing the prototype, the project will be expanded to other regions where access to care is a major challenge. The project implementation process will take approximately three years. It is expected that after the implementation of the project an increase in the number of eye patients seeking care will increase.