National Health Emergency Operations Center (NHEOC)

The National Health Emergency Operations Center (NHEOC) is a government center responsible for the implementation and follow-up of the tasks that the Ministry of Health (MOH) has been undertaking to manage crises and disasters. It is a point of contact between MOH and other government entities, such as the Saudi Red Crescent Authority and the General Directorate of Civil Defense.

NHEOC was founded in 2019 and launched by MOH. The center was established to pursue the efforts meant to combat the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and minimize its spread.

NHEOC aims to increase safety at human gatherings. Moreover, it enhances preparedness, monitoring, response, and follow-up of all incidents and disasters, in accordance with best regional and international practices.

NHEOC carries out several tasks, such as monitoring alerts and receiving reports of incidents and disasters, following up on the readiness of the main means of communication, issuing periodic reports to the relevant entities, coordinating health services provided in official tasks, coordinating incident response operations with the relevant entities, while evaluating their efficiency, and making summative recommendations accordingly.

The center's role is not limited to addressing and responding to disasters and crises. Rather, it extends to revealing their causes by conducting a periodic survey of risks, both inside and outside health facilities at the regional level. Thereupon, it analyzes risk causes, drafts periodic reports, and prepares action plans meant to prevent the recurrence of disasters due to those risks, in addition to being ready to address the consequences beforehand.

NHEOC is linked to all hospitals, healthcare centers, and other public and private health sectors. Being the point of contact with the health affairs directorates, it facilitates direct communication with twenty branches across the provinces of the Kingdom. These branches supervise public and private hospitals and address their incidents. In case higher-level support is needed, the crisis management function within NHEOC will be activated to coordinate government communication and contain the impact of the incident.

The center operates around the clock by a Saudi team of over fifty staff working at different intervals to carry out two tasks, the first being: monitoring incidents and reports. Second: ensuring readiness by measuring how well health facilities are prepared to deal with crises and disasters. This is done through a daily report that includes the bed capacity of each hospital in the Kingdom, the number of blood units available, the available human cadres and their specializations, the number of ambulances, and the available stock of basic medical materials. This aspect covers all hospitals, whether owned by MOH, the military, the university, or the private sector.

In October 2021, NHEOC was adopted in the Kingdom as the first collaborating center with the World Health Organization (WHO) in this field across the Eastern Mediterranean Region. This accreditation was the result of effective communication with the Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office (EMRO), and the two-year cooperation in various axes within the fields of health emergency and disaster management, as one of the basic steps to obtain accreditation.