Boudiaf: “We’ll strip private clinics of their licenses if they overtake the red line”

The Minister of health, population and hospital reform, Abdelmalek Boudiaf, has asserted that his Ministerial department will dispatch in the next few months special investigative commissions to monitor the way the country’s private clinics are being managed.

Mr Boudiaf threatened on the sidelines of the official inauguration ceremony of a regional assessment health symposium in the city of Oran, in western Algeria, to take stringent punitive measures against all private clinics which are not up to the mark in terms of proper medical care and attention required by the patients.

The health minister said that he wouldn’t waver to strip any failing private clinic of its operating license if gross lapses and deficiencies are exposed by the investigative commissions which are to be set up shortly by the health ministry.

Mr Abdelmalek Boudiaf  further announced that a new binding health law, which will clearly regulate the whole national health sector, would be translated into reality as early as next year as part of efforts to rejuvenate and upgrade the vital health sector in Algeria.

The Minister also revealed that the health Ministry has embarked on a series of negotiations with various pharmaceutical laboratory suppliers of the national market for the purpose of securing a curtailment of the price of imported medicines. A national tender especially geared to local producers is underway, he underlined.