Muscat: Oman will need an additional 13,000 doctors to meet the requirement of the health staff in the country by 2040, the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI) said.
The NCSI added an additional 759 million riyals are needed to cover the cost of these services.
NCSI also disclosed that Oman needs over 2,000 more pharmacists by 2040. “The number of additional pharmacists required to meet the needs of the health staff in the Sultanate by 2040 is 2,146,” it tweeted.
The Ministry of Health said there were 74 hospitals offering 6,589 beds (14.9 for every 10,000 people in the country). The total number of doctors were 8,622, followed by 19,762 nurses and 2,420 pharmacists in 2016.
There were 266 government health clinics and 1,000 private clinics.
In 2016/2017 the total number of students in all the ministry’s Educational Health Institutes stood at 579 (124 male and 455 female, of which 421 are nursing students).
There were only two hospitals with 12 beds and 10 clinics in Oman in the early 1970s.
Oman’s expat population may increase by 10 per cent by 2040, according to the government.
Over the next two decades, the number of expats living and working in the country will increase by over 575,000.
As of April 9, there were 2,097,280 expats in Oman, while the number of Omani nationals stood at 2,566,281, according to the latest data released by the NCSI.
The NCSI issued a study included different scenarios of population growth and the requirements of sustainable development between 2016 and 2040 in areas such as construction, health, education, electricity and water sector.
The country’s GDP is estimated to increase by 31 billion riyals between 2016 and 2040.
