One of the best cancer centres in Saudi Arabia at King Fahad Medical City

Dr. Mushabbab Al Asiri, Executive Director of Medical Affairs of King Fahad Medical City talks about the best cancer centre in Saudi Arabia.

The cancer centre was one of the pillars of KFMC when it started because this was the first facility under the Ministry of Health for cancer care. We started the program in 2005 and we started treating patients in 2007. We served more than 2,000 new patients last year in KFMC and that by itself is around 15% of total cancer patients in Saudi Arabia.

We have five departments; we have medical oncology, haematology and bone marrow transplant, radiation oncology, children and palliative care. So we offer comprehensive cancer care. In addition we are the main player in national breast cancer screening program. So we also do primary care in addition to tertiary care. We have only sent a few patients for bone marrow transplants because we haven’t started that program yet. We will start it in May this year, 2016. We are going to start the program with BMT because we are ready to launch it. By that time we will have achieved comprehensive cancer care.

We also have excellent surgical oncology within the KFMC. We have breast cancer surgeons and thoracic surgeons and specialised surgeons for brain tumours. We also have a program for muscular skeletal tumours and we have a program for paediatric cancer surgery.

If a patient comes to KFMC they will have all of the facilities within the medical city. We have investigation and an excellent oncological imaging department with MRI, PET scans, CTs and others. We have an excellent state of the art pathology department and so we have all of the facilities needed for cancer, which include surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and supportive care all together.

We have built excellent relations with cancer societies in the charity arena. We are working with the Saudi Cancer Society and the Saudi Cancer Foundation to do the support side outside of the hospital. We feel that this kind of care is unique and comprehensive. That is why our cancer centre is called “the Comprehensive Cancer Centre”.