BAHRAIN's medical services have been criticised by a World Health Organisation (WHO) official for a lack of planning and co-ordination.

WHO consultant Dr Walid Abubaker has been drafted in to help streamline and improve the country's health service.

He is on his first visit to the country and has already identified one of the key problem areas.

"What we see is that all the departments have their own separate plans and are moving in different directions," he told the GDN yesterday.

"What results is each pulling their own horse, while the centre becomes fragile.

"Any professional administration should not have that."

Dr Abubaker is health systems and services development technical officer at the WHO's Eastern Mediterranean Region Office (EMRO).

He made his comments on the sidelines of a workshop to introduce the ministry's heads of human resources, training, planning and information.

The expert said he now planned to diagnose gaps in healthcare and set up a plan for administrators to follow.

"What should emerge is a set of rules that will be in place so that all plans are concentrated in one direction - that of development," he said.

"The idea is to get the programme managers to make informed decisions, which are supported by hard evidence."

He revealed the goal was to provide effective and professional health coverage across the country.

An electronic observatory for human resources in health is also being planned for Bahrain in the future, he added.

"This will be an initiative among the various departments to produce information and knowledge necessary for improving human resources in health policy decisions and to share the knowledge obtained from the experiences in order to improve management of human resource development in the health services sector," he said.

mandeep@gdn.com.bh