Patients are treated in a hospital in Kuwait City .
KUWAIT CITY: Kuwait is to bar expats from visiting public hospitals in mornings, local media said yesterday, in a decision activists labelled as “racist”.
The decision follows complaints in parliament of Kuwaiti patients having to wait for treatment at public health facilities because of the large number of expats.
Health Minister, Mohammad Al Haifi, also a surgeon, ordered that the outpatient clinics at the public hospital in Jahra, west of Kuwait City, will only receive Kuwaiti patients in the morning from June 1. Expats will be able to receive treatment in evenings, said the decision published in Kuwaiti media.
Kuwait is home to 2.6m foreigners, mostly from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Egypt and Syria in addition to 1.2m citizens.
The system will be applied at the clinics at Jahra hospital for six months on a “trial basis before its application at other (government) hospitals”. Kuwait provides free medical services to citizens but expats must pay an annual fee of $175 each besides reduced charges for certain procedures like X-ray.
Opposition lawyer and writer Mohammad Abdulqader Al Jassem described it as “racial segregation” on Twitter.
Similar restrictions are in place at some government agencies, including the traffic department, which handles applications from Kuwaitis only in mornings. Agencies
