Minister of Health Dr. Ibrahim Al-Badour on Thursday marked the completion of rehabilitation and development work at 16 comprehensive and primary healthcare centers across Amman, Zarqa, Madaba, Irbid and the Ramtha district. The project was carried out with the World Health Organization in Jordan and funded by the European Union at a total cost of roughly JD4.1 million.
اضافة اعلان
Al-Badour said the Ministry's emphasis on primary care rests on the conviction that the health center is the citizen's first point of entry into the health system, and that strengthening its role and service capacity bears directly on both the quality of care and the efficiency of the system as a whole.
The Ministry is developing health centers as part of an integrated chain, he said, one that begins with prevention, health promotion and early detection, moves through diagnosis, treatment and follow-up, and refers patients to more specialized care when it is needed.
Strengthening that first tier this year has eased congestion in the emergency departments of several government hospitals, Al-Badour said, by widening the centers' capacity to handle cases that can be managed within primary care and freeing hospitals to concentrate on emergency and specialized work.
He described the project as a model of cooperation with international partners, singling out the European Union and the WHO, and said the measure of any project is its effect on the quality of service citizens receive. The Ministry will continue to expand the network of health centers and upgrade their infrastructure so that patients are treated in the right place at the right time and health sector resources are used efficiently, he added.
European Union Ambassador to Jordan Pierre-Christophe Chatzisavas said the EU supports the Jordanian government's drive toward universal health coverage by 2030, describing primary healthcare as a foundation for prevention, screening and early treatment. The rehabilitation of the 16 centers, he said, is producing tangible results from the EU's cooperation with the Ministry of Health and the WHO, within a framework of $100 million in EU-Jordan cooperation over the past decade.
