Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Rabiah

Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Rabiah
Minister of Health
In office
14 February 2009 – 21 April 2014
Prime Minister King Abdullah
Preceded by Hamad Al Manie
Succeeded by Adel Fakeih
Personal details
Born (1954-11-11) 11 November 1954
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Alma mater King Saud University
King Khalid University
Dalhousie University
University of Alberta
Religion Islam

Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Rabiah (born 11 November 1954) is a Saudi surgeon and former minister of health.

Early life

Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Rabiah was born in Riyadh on November 11, 1954.[1] When Al Rabiah was a young boy, he fell off of his bike and got a wound so serious that he needed to get stitches. After he got his first stitches, Al Rabiah complained to his father that getting the stitches hurt more than the accident itself, because the doctor did not use any anesthetics to alleviate the pain. Although he was only a boy, Al Rabiah realized that something had to be done to improve surgical procedures. As a result, he decided to become a surgeon who could perform painless surgeries on patients.[2]

Education

To fulfill his dreams of becoming a doctor, Al Rabiah attended medical school in Saudi Arabia. In July 1979, Al Rabiah received his Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) from King Saud University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.[3] He applied his medical knowledge for the first time in King Khalid University as an intern.[3] He completed his internship in August 1980, and in 1981, Al Rabiah was formally licensed to practice medicine.[4] He received his Pediatric Surgery Fellowship from the University of Alberta Hospital and became a chief resident at the university in 1985.[4] In 1987, Al Rabiah completed his residency in general and pediatric surgery at Dalhousie University.[3]

Career

Conjoined twins surgeon

On February 8, 1992, Al Rabiah participated as a surgeon in the operation on Sudanese conjoined twins at King Faisal Specialist Hospital. After his first successful operation on the twins, Al Rabiah continued performing surgeries on conjoined twins all across the Arab world. As of today, he has performed 31 successful separations of twins.[3] His latest surgery was in 2016, when he led his medical team consisting of 19 doctors and specialists in the separation of Fatima and Masha, Pakistani conjoined twins. Al Rabiah’s team ran multiple tests on the twins, which helped the team determine that the twins were conjoined at the lower chest and abdomen, sharing a chest wall and a liver. The team also discovered that the surgery had an eighty percent success rate. Al Rabiah gave the approval for the surgery, a complex six-stage process that lasted about seven hours.[3]

In 2002, Al Rabiah received the case of Ahmed and Mohammed, a Malaysian conjoined twin, from King Abdullah himself. Malaysian and British surgeons had already tried to separate the twins, but failed. Up for a challenge, Al Rabiah accepted the king’s request and performed surgery on the twins on September 17, 2002. The surgery took him about twenty-three and a half hours. To this date, Al Rabiah considers this operation his most difficult, yet proudest surgery.[5]

Initially, only 10% of Al Rabiah’s surgery crew were Saudi Arabians. However, as Al Rabiah performed more surgeries, he recruited more Saudi surgeons for his crew. As a result, Saudi medical professionals gained more opportunities to participate in surgeries and improve their surgical skills. According to the latest interview with Al Rabiah, his surgery crew today consists of all Saudi Arabian operators.[6]

More details about Al Rabiah’s surgical career can be found in his book My Experience with Siamese Twins. He provides his personal experience and thoughts about his surgical career.[3]

Minister of Health

As Al Rabiah successfully performed many conjoined twin surgeries, King Abdullah took notice of him and invited him to be recognized for his proud and successful work. King Abdullah also requested Al Rabiah to take on the position of the Minister of Health, while continuing his work as a surgeon. Al Rabiah readily accepted the king’s offer, and on February 2009, he was officially appointed as the Minister of Health in Saudi Arabia.[6]

Al Rabiah put forth several medical policies to strengthen the structure of the Ministry of Health and improve conditions in Saudi Arabian medical institutes. One of his greatest feats was launching the national project for health, which included building new hospitals and small health care centers in Saudi Arabia. In 2012, he put in plans to build 122 hospitals and 305 primary health care units in Saudi Arabia.[7] Al Rabiah also wanted to set up medical cities in the north and south of the kingdom, which would allow more people to access health care easily.[7] He also planned to build a specialist hospital in Jazan and a maternity and pediatric hospital in Jeddah.[7] All of his plans roughly added up to $3.7 billion, but money wasn’t Al Rabiah’s issue.[8] His goal was to provide unprecedented medical care to his people. As a result, he made Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Health the Middle East’s biggest investor in hospitals.[8] He further improved medicine in Saudi Arabia by requiring hospitals to use the Micromedex to search for drugs.[9] He also developed a software that helped monitor the health of the general population. His other medical policies improved the management and employee efficiency at the Ministry of Health.[9]

In April 2012 Al Rabiah assigned a woman, Muneera bint Hamdan Al Osaimi, as an assistant undersecretary in the medical services affairs department at the Ministry of Health.[10] She is the first woman appointed to this post at the ministry in Saudi Arabia.[10]

In September 2012, the first case of MERS-CoV was detected in Saudi Arabia.[11] By April 2014, Saudi Arabia had 339 known cases of MERS-CoV, including 102 deaths.[11] As situations got worse, with 50 cases of MERS being found in one week, the public was upset with the Ministry of Health and how it was dealing with the epidemic. The people angrily prompted Al Rabiah to step down from his position as the Minister of Health.[11] On April 21, 2014, Al Rabiah gave up his position to Labor Minister Adel Fakeih, who served as the temporary minister.[12] In December 2014, Mohammed bin Ali bin Hayazaa al-Hayazaa officially took over as the new minister.[12]

Supervisor General of the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief

Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Rabiah is also the Supervisor General of King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief (KSRELIEF).[13] As the Supervisor General, Al Rabiah has devoted many efforts to give relief to countries requiring humanitarian aid. In 2015, Al Rabiah lead KSRELIEF in providing aid to the refugees in Yemen. KSRELIEF, alongside with 70 other partners, launched a total of 80 humanitarian and relief projects.[13] Al Rabiah helped create 300 refuges, gave 14 million people food and water, 15 million health aid, and 3.5 million people environmental amelioration.[14] Over two million Yemen refugees were also given labor and education opportunities in Saudi Arabia. It has been recently reported that 25,000 Yemeni students are currently attending school in Saudi Arabia.[14]

KSRELIEF also gave great care to Syria, Hadramaut, al-Jawf, and Ma’rib. Al Rabiah made sure that Saudi Arabia was ready to provide necessary materials to Syria within twenty-four hours.[14] In addition, around 1631 tons of aid, consisting of 70,000 food baskets, were sent to aid the refugees in Hardramaut, al-Jawf, and Ma’rib.[15] With the help of UN organizations such as UNICEF and WHO, KSRELIEF also created few relief programs for women and children in the affected regions.[15]

Al Rabiah explained the motives behind his benevolent actions. He said that the “Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud guidelines underline that the center shall perform its operations in an unbiased way, regardless of any other considerations, and abide by international rules and humanitarian concepts.”[13]

Although Al Rabiah holds several authoritative positions, he has always been a doctor at heart. He set the politics behind the situation in Syria and Yemen aside and provided as much medical care as he possibly could to refugees in these regions. Both a doctor and a politician, Al Rabiah positively put his political power in action to impact medical practices in the Middle East.

Other positions

Personal life

Al Rabiah is a father of seven girls and one boy. His eldest child and only son Khalid and his youngest daughter Shadha followed Al Rabiah’s footsteps and attended the College of Applied Medical Sciences at King Saud University.[16]

Al Rabiah is also known to maintain a good relationship with the people around him. He always keeps in touch with his patients, who constantly send gifts to Al Rabiah to thank him. According to Al Rabiah, there is a plate full of candy in his office which was given as a gift by one of his patients.[16] Al Rabiah also has a special connection with the royal family. He especially had a tight relationship with King Abdullah, who passed away in 2015.

Recognition

References

  1. ↑ "Event class: sultan, bin, ali, born, khan, al, king, father, shah, prince". Carnegie Mellon University Computer Science. Carnegie Mellon University. Retrieved August 1, 2016.
  2. ↑ "عبدالله الربيعة .. طبيب وجراح عالمي من السعودية | المرسال". www.almrsal.com. Retrieved 2016-08-01.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 "Biography and Synopsis | Ministry of Health & HIMSS Middle East Conference and Exhibition 2013". www.himssme.org. Retrieved 2016-07-27.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Abdullah bin AbdulAziz al-Rabeeah". MEED. Retrieved 2016-07-28.
  5. ↑ "Conjoined Twins". www.conjoinedtwins.med.sa. Retrieved 2016-08-01.
  6. 1 2 خليجية (2015-07-03), قصص للملك عبدالله يرويها عبدالله الربيعة في برنامج #في_الصميم, retrieved 2016-08-01
  7. 1 2 3 "Saudi approves $3.2bn of health plans | ConstructionWeekOnline.com". www.constructionweekonline.com. Retrieved 2016-08-05.
  8. 1 2 "Abdullah bin AbdulAziz al-Rabeeah". MEED. Retrieved 2016-08-05.
  9. 1 2 "د. الربيعة.. الطفل الحالم بمساعدة الأطفال,". archive.aawsat.com. Retrieved 2016-08-05.
  10. 1 2 "Saudi health ministry reshuffle sees the first appointment of women assistant undersecretary". Al Arabiya. 3 April 2012. Retrieved 5 September 2012.
  11. 1 2 3 Staff, By CNN. "MERS cases spike to 339 in Saudi Arabia - CNN.com". CNN. Retrieved 2016-08-05.
  12. 1 2 "Saudi names new health minister to combat MERS virus". Retrieved 2016-08-05.
  13. 1 2 3 Al-awsat, Asharq (2016-07-21). "KSRELIEF Provides Health Services to Approximately 16 Million Yemenis - ASHARQ AL-AWSAT". Retrieved 2016-08-05.
  14. 1 2 3 Al-awsat, Asharq (2016-02-14). "Dr. Abdullah al-Rabiah: King Salman Relief Centre Prepared to Provide Aid to Syria within 24 Hours - ASHARQ AL-AWSAT". Retrieved 2016-08-05.
  15. 1 2 Al-awsat, Asharq (2016-06-06). "Saudi Aid Convoy Carry 1631 Tons of Food to Hadramaut, Ma'rib, Al-Jawf - ASHARQ AL-AWSAT". Retrieved 2016-08-05.
  16. 1 2 "د. الربيعة.. الطفل الحالم بمساعدة الأطفال,". archive.aawsat.com. Retrieved 5 August 2016.
  17. ↑ "45 Dr Abdullah Al Rabiah". Arabian Business. 2010. Retrieved 1 September 2012.
  18. ↑ "Dr. Abdullah Abdulazziz M. Al Rabeeah - Sheikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Award for Medical Sciences - HMA". hmaward.org.ae. Retrieved 5 August 2016.
Political offices
Preceded by
Hamad Al Manie		 Health Minister of Saudi Arabia
2009 – 2014 		Succeeded by
Adel Fakeih
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