Abdullah al-Rabeeah

Abdullah Abdulaziz al-Rabeeah (born on February 23, 1955) is a Saudi physician and surgeon specializing in conjoined twins. He serves as an advisor at the Saudi Royal Court and is the General Supervisor of the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center. He served as the Minister of Health in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia until 2014.

Abdullah al-Rabeeah attended King Saud University in Riyadh City, earning his Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery degrees in 1979. He then obtained a Fellowship in General Surgery from the University of Alberta in Edmonton City, Canada, in 1986, followed by a Fellowship in Pediatric Surgery from IWK Children’s Hospital at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, in 1987.

Abdullah al-Rabeeah held several leadership positions in both the academic and health sectors. He served as the Executive Director General for Health Affairs at the National Guard from 2003 to 2009 and as the founding Director of King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences in Riyadh between 2005 and 2009. He also chaired the Board of Directors of King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center in Riyadh from 2010 to 2014 and was a member of the Board of Trustees at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Jeddah from 2009 to 2016. He held the position of Minister of Health in 2009 for five years before being appointed Advisor at the Royal Court in 2014. Since 2015, he has served as the General Supervisor of the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center.

Al-Rabeeah oversaw the establishment of numerous health and academic projects across the Kingdom's provinces. Additionally, he chaired and participated in national and international scientific, and health committees and councils, he also participated as a speaker at international scientific conferences and authored and co-authored around 105 research studies and papers in specialized scientific fields. He has published five books focusing on conjoined twins and pediatric surgery.

Abdullah al-Rabeeah is renowned for his expertise in conjoined twin cases. He has overseen the separation of 142 conjoined twins from twenty-six countries as part of the Saudi Conjoined Twins Program. He has successfully led approximately sixty-one complex separation surgeries for conjoined twins.

Abdullah al-Rabeeah has received numerous medals and awards from various entities, including the King Abdulaziz Medal of the First Class in 2002 and the King Abdulaziz Sash of the Excellent Class in 2003. Additionally, he was awarded the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland at the Commander Grade in 2005. He also received the Sheikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum Award for Medical Sciences, Distinguished Personalities of the Arab World, at the Seventh Dubai International Conference for Medical Sciences in the United Arab Emirates in 2012. Furthermore, he received an honorary award and was granted membership in the Saudi General Surgery Society at the Fifteenth Scientific Forum of the society in 2024.