PHSSR Saudi Arabia 2025

When standardised by population size, the country has a density 7 –9 health physicians and nurses per 1,000 population, which is greater than the global benchmark of 4.5 set by the World Health Organization for universal health coverage (see Figure 5). However, this density drops to one physician and two nurses when considering only Saudi health workers. 43 Sustainability and Resilience in the Saudi Arabian Health System The Partnership for Health System Sustainability and Resilience Figure 5: Density of physicians and nurses per 1,000 population, Saudi and non-Saudi 2.563.043.022.95 4.385.456.265.20 a Excludes medical cities and some university hospitals. Source: Alghaith T et al., 2021.Human Resources for Health a (2019)Saudi Commission for Health Specialties (2019)Saudi Health Council Balanced Distribution Data Set (2018)Ministry of Health (2019)8.15 9.28 8.49 6.94WHO benchmark Figure 6: Projected supply and demand for physicians and nurses Sources: Lin T et al., 2021; Alghaith T et al., 2021. The demand for healthcare professionals is expected to increase by 16% over the next decade, with a need for approximately 356,500 healthcare professionals by 2030 (see Figure 6). Saudi Non-Saudi Total