King Mohammed VI laid the foundation stone for a new Community Medical Center funded by the Mohammed V Foundation for Solidarity and initiated the second stage of the Connected Mobile Medical Units program, under the same Foundation, on Tuesday in the Lissasfa district of the Hay Hassani prefecture in Casablanca.
The two projects will strengthen Morocco’s national healthcare system, improve medical services for citizens, consolidate community healthcare services, facilitate access especially in rural areas to quality basic health services, and ensure regular medical monitoring for patients.
With a budget of around 90 million MAD, the Lissasfa Community Medical Center is the third of its kind in the Casablanca-Settat region, following those in the Sidi Moumen district and the new town of Errahma.
The new center will serve as an intermediary facility between basic healthcare facilities (levels 1 and 2) and hospitals, providing services to around 60,000 individuals annually. It will help ease the burden on existing hospital facilities in the region and reduce the need for long-distance travel to access medical services.
Construction of the new center is expected to be completed within 24 months on an 11,170 m2 site (with a 7,692 m2 covered area) and will offer various services including outpatient consultations, functional explorations, dental care, and emergency medical services. It will also feature units for primary care, radiology, childbirth and sterilization services, an operating room, a medical analysis laboratory, a hospitalization unit, a pharmacy, and a kitchen.
Through collaboration between the Mohammed V Foundation for Solidarity, the Ministry of Health and Social Protection and other partners, three Community Medical Centers will be established in Casablanca, two in Fes, two in Tangiers, and one each in Agadir, Marrakech, Rabat, Salé and Temara.
The King was briefed on the “Hospital Information System,” a digital platform of the Ministry of Health and Social Protection based on the patients’ administrative data, medical file, and care records.
Available in both primary care and hospital facilities, this system enables healthcare professionals to access patient medical data at any time to speed up medical treatment and improve efficiency.
The second phase of the Connected Mobile Medical Units program will extend medical services to rural populations through a combination of community care and telemedicine.
A partnership between the Mohammed V Foundation for Solidarity, the Ministry of Health and Social Protection and the service provider MEDIOT Technology, the first stage of this program, launched by the Sovereign on October 28, 2023, provides for deploying 50 connected mobile medical units in 34 provinces, across nine regions of the Kingdom. The second stage involves the deployment of an additional 50 new connected mobile medical units.
Each connected mobile medical unit comprises a medical block consisting of two multi-purpose consultation and treatment cubicles, equipped with basic medical instruments, medical furniture, connectivity systems, and a full range of latest-generation biomedical equipment used for remote consultations.
These units will be staffed by a team comprised of a general practitioner, two nurses, and an administrative manager, providing general medical consultations, tele-expertise, outpatient care, and public health program monitoring.
General practitioners will be tasked with utilizing tele-expertise whenever a case necessitates expert opinion or examination assistance. In such instances, the general practitioner will contact a specialist from a range of medical fields (including gynecology-obstetrics, pediatrics, endocrinology, dermatology, ENT, cardiology, pneumology, and nephrology) who operates from a central telemedicine platform connected to all the mobile medical units.
The sovereign also followed a simulation of a tele-expertise carried out by a general practitioner on site, in liaison with specialist doctors at the central telemedicine platform in Casablanca.
The first phase of the program, launched in October 2023, provided 119,532 medical services to 104,041 people, 65% of them women. Nearly 96,753 people received general consultations and care, and 11,989 cases required tele-expertise in the various specialties available.
The monarch donated three ambulances and five utility vehicles to representatives of the “Adassil”, “Talat N’Yacoub,” and “Tizi N’Test” municipalities, and to five associations affected by the September 08 earthquake as part of a larger initiative to distribute 46 vehicles across different regions of the country.