Bahrain Mirror (Exclusive): Who has made the training program which is currently applied at the Ministry of Health to train and hire graduates? How long has it been made? Is it still suitable? How long does the graduate doctor spend to graduate from this program? The most important question is: Why are we so far back in Bahrain, and how did these countries, whose citizens used to come to Bahrain to get treated, have become more advanced than us in the health sector? Is it due to a material or human factor?

Doctor Kassim Omran sheds light on tje fact that the first regulations for medical training in the Health Ministry were made during the tenure of former Health Minister Dr. Ali Fakhro. He sees that they "reflect an objective and national view and an understanding of the importance of local medical training in building a national health project."

He adds that "the medical training program like any other project needs to be worked on and developed in order to increase its efficiency and fill its gaps. However, the development was limited and it had structural defaults in the training structure for training graduates in the Health Ministry."

As for its faults, Omran explains: "the Bahraini doctor needs-if he had the opportunity to receive training in the Health Ministry- to spend between 5 to 10 years or even more, in order to graduate from the training program, while we find that the duration of the respectful training programs in other states doesn't exceed 3 to 4 years as a maximum."

He believes that the currently applied training program is "worn out and a cause of the failure of many cadres, and a reason for the loss of years from their lives,"

Dr. Omran sees that the current program has become one of the reasons for Bahrain's deterioration in the medical field. "Bahrain has preceded the Gulf States in establishing training programs for doctors, nurses and health technicians, but today it has fallen to the back of the line of Gulf countries, many of which have built solid national training programs."

This is because these countries designed their programs far from arbitrariness and responses based on reactions or governed by short-sighted policies and calculations and modest objectives.

Omran wondered what makes an administratively advanced country at some point fall below that relative level that it used to be at.

He comments "The difference is not due to the material factor, but to reasons directly related to the human administrative factor, implementation policies (...) and bad intentions."

Omran believes that "factors are intertwined, whether the innocent or malicious kind," highlighting that "as a result, this led to a paralyzed and damaged training movement that suffers from inability and reluctance to absorb new graduates since the 1990s."

"A part of the unemployment of health workers in various occupational categories, including doctors, nurses, technicians and health assistants is a reflection of the multifaceted conflict in this country."

"It is a conflict whose result and direction are determined by: political loyalty, sectarian affiliation, family name, ethnic history, and place of residence."

"It doesn't need much effort to identify the affected group by unemployment based on this indicator," he said.

Political and administrative factors are intertwined. However, it is clear that the crisis of unemployed doctors needs to be fixed. Will the new government take its chance and put the Bahraini interest in its calculations or will it proceed with the policy of retaliation and repeat mistakes to smother the rest of the exhausted health sector?

Arabic Version