SCH hosts a Symposium for Introducing the Arabization Center for Medical Science (ACMLS)

The Supreme Council of Health hosted the first symposium on Arabization Center for Medical Sciences on Tuesday January 13 2015. The symposium aims to introduce the efforts of the Arabization Center for Medical Sciences in translating medical books and curriculum.

1Mr. Ahmad Al-Khulaifi, SCH Assistant Secretary General for Administrative Affairs said that this symposium is an enforcement of the decision of The Arab Health Ministers’ Council for GCC States during its 39th session on organizing an annual symposium in the Arab States to highlight the center’s efforts.

He stated during his speech that this symposium reflects the SCH efforts in enhancing cooperation with the regional and international centers and authorities and introducing the specialists of government bodies, universities and institutions in the public and private sectors.

Mr. Al-khulaifi clarified that the Arabization Center for Medical Sciences contributed to translating, editing medical books in Arabic, producing medical dictionaries and atlases as well as recording medical documents and information in a comprehensive database for easy restoring.

He highlighted the importance of providing more support and efforts especially that the translation and arabization of sciences including medical sciences contributes to the nation’s development and help remove the barriers and obstacles of those interested in learning sciences.

Dr. Yaqoub Ahmad Hassan Al-Sharrah, Assistant Secretary General of Arabization Center for Medical Sciences stated that the center will produce medical dictionaries and atlases as learning aids which help students and professors of medicine schools in the Arab world and those interested in these important areas.

He added that the number of terms translated and explained to Arabic as part of the Medicine and Health Sciences’ Dictionary project reached 5000 terms in 2014 and the total number of medical terms reached more than 64000 the translation of which started since 2009.

Dr. Al-Sharrah mentioned that 320 books were translated into Arabic by the center in addition to producing 20 medical books in different sub-medical sciences and 70 books on health education that are available for ordinary readers.
The center also issued six medical atlases since 2002, the last atlas produced was “Dermatological Disorders of Elderly Adults”.

The importance of translating health sciences into Arabic is demonstrated by statistics which reveal that medicine is taught in English in 78 colleges of medicine in the Arab countries, and taught in French in six colleges. This shows the prevalence of teaching medicine in foreign languages in the colleges of science and medicine.

A study, carried out by the Arabization Center for Medical Sciences, was presented during the symposium which showed that the reading and comprehension of medicine students was (43%) higher in case of writing in Arabic in comparison to English while the overall comprehension increased (15%) approximately.

The symposium also addressed the activities and efforts of the Arabization Center for Medical Sciences since its establishment, the arabization obstacles and the experiences of Arab countries in this area.
Mr. Abdullatif Ali Al-Abdulla, SCH International Health Relations Director, stated that the arabization of health sciences is a significant issue in terms of medical and cultural areas. He added that many nations acquired knowledge and witnessed progress due to translating medical achievements from the Arab and Islamic civilizations.

2He mentioned that many countries which achieved scientific progresses in different areas, particularly in the health field have translated sciences to their local languages and the studying of such field became in their local languages as well. Therefore the symposium was organized to introduce the Arabization Center for Medical Sciences including their contributions and services in this field as well as the obstacles they face.

 

The Arabization Center for Medical Science, which is headquartered in Kuwait, is an Arab organization, which is being commanded by the Arab League’s Arab Health Ministers Council. It was established during the 5th meeting of the Arab Health Ministers Council in Tunisia in 1980 to correspond with the convention of the Arab League with regard to making Arabic the official language in the Arab universities.

The center arabizes the medical sciences by providing the tools and methods necessary for Arabization. It also translates and produces publications in the medical sciences.

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