PHSSR Saudi Arabia 2025

coordinated response resulted in the continuation of basic and specialised health service delivery to all citizens and residents at all levels without discontinuation or fragmentation. Throughout the pandemic, health services were offered equitably to all individuals within the country, including undocumented migrants. As this signi ficant population was at high risk of acquiring and transmitting Covid-19, the government allocated resources for testing and delivering free care, ensuring that legal or legitimacy status had no impacts on health outcome. Recognising the many health hazards that undocumented migrants face, preventing the spread of illness and granting access to those most in need were priorities for the country as a whole. As a result, Saudi Arabia had a low Covid-19 fatality rate of 1%. One of the nine WHO pillars for combatting the pandemic was the maintenance of essential health services. Up until 31 December 2020, a number of initiatives were instituted in this regard, including, but not limited to: •The Saudi Patient Safety Centre issued guidelines on determining priorities when dealing with health conditions; •Remote consulting clinics were established for patients with cardiac disease and for patients with diabetes, reaching 15,000 of the former and 60,000 of the latter; •More than 21,000 people were reached by out-patient geriatric services and 5,000 were reached by virtual clinics; •Virtual clinics were activated in 19 psychiatric hospitals, reaching more than 40,000 patients; •Delivery of medications from health facilities to patients in their homes was established to reduce the spread of infection, reaching 445,308 patients; •Medication delivery services and home vaccinations were provided by health centres in several regions, reaching over 20,000 people per month. The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the deployment of novel care delivery methods, such as remote consultations, which reduce the risk of virus transmission and ensure continuity of care. Telehealth can have impacts on nursing practice and quality, including fostering nurse-patient communication and promoting positive outcomes, continuation of nursing care and positive experiences (Banjar WM & Alfaleh A, 2021). The SEHA app provided two million remote medical consultations with an almost eight-fold increase compared to pre-pandemic, while other apps, such as Mawid, also saw signi ficant increases in users and consultations. Remote consultations were found to be effective in maintaining a high standard of care during the pandemic for ENT surgery, with no statistically signi ficant difference detected between remote and face-to-face groups for rates of investigation, listing for surgeries, referral to other specialties and initiating treatment (Banjar WM & Alfaleh A, 2021). These novel care delivery methods helped to ensure that patients had access to timely and quality healthcare during the pandemic, while reducing the risk of virus transmission. They will likely continue to be valuable tools for clinicians in the remobilisation of health services in the post-pandemic era. Several policy initiatives intended to improve the resilience of the health system through changes to health service delivery are currently in the planning stages. One major policy initiative, the Health Sector Transformation Programme (HSTP), seeks to improve health system resilience. The aim of the programme is to restructure the health sector to be comprehensive, effective and integrated, with a focus on updating and expanding primary care, rehabilitation and long-term care. The HSTP seeks to address challenges in the healthcare system, such as barriers to implementing PPPs, developing the Saudi workforce, effectively managing healthcare reimbursement and ensuring vulnerable populations have access to high-quality tertiary healthcare. Another initiative is the ongoing reform of the primary health care (PHC) system, which started in 2016. This reform aims to strengthen PHC to improve trust, utilisation of services and to address the growing burden of NCDs. This aligns with the targets of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and Saudi Arabia’s Vision 63 Sustainability and Resilience in the Saudi Arabian Health System The Partnership for Health System Sustainability and Resilience