Article 5 of the Saudi Health Law

This article provides that the Ministry of Health is the body responsible for providing health care, and lists its tasks in particular:

1. Ensuring the provision of primary health care services.
2. Providing care services in hospitals and secondary and specialized treatment centers.
3. Preparing health and vital statistics and conducting studies and research.
4. Setting the health strategy and plans so as to ensure that care is within the reach of all members of society.
5. Setting programs to prepare and develop the health workforce in cooperation with the relevant bodies.
6. Setting instructions and requirements to prevent the entry and spread of infectious, epidemic and quarantine diseases, report them and combat them.
7. Regulating the circulation of medicines and monitoring them so as to ensure their availability, fitness, proper use and suitability of their prices.
8. Setting the rules for licensing private health institutions and those who work in them, and monitoring their activity and the quality of their performance.
9. Setting qualitative quality rules and standards for health care and ensuring their application.
10. Verifying the proper practice of health professions and workers' compliance with the rules and ethics of the profession.
11. Setting the rules regulating medical and pharmaceutical research and trials.
12. Setting plans for spreading comprehensive health awareness.
13. (Item 12 bis) Setting the national policy on women's health and the plans for implementing and developing it, in cooperation with the relevant bodies.

Item 12 bis was added by Royal Decree No. M/52 dated 4/8/1437 AH.

In practical terms the Ministry is the reference for licensing private health facilities, monitoring their quality, and the practice of health professions. Article 6 deals with the network of health care services that the State works on providing through the Ministry in all regions.

Anyone who needs an opinion on a particular situation would do well to consult a lawyer specialized in health laws or administrative cases.