Alberto Rubio
“We have a great opportunity for mutual collaboration with Spain,” said Dr Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Rabeeah, General Overseer of the King Salman Centre for Relief and Humanitarian Action, during a meeting with journalists yesterday. The adviser to King Salman is attending the Global Impact of Vaccination Conference in Madrid.
Al Rabeeah did not give too many details about this possible collaboration, but he assured that both countries have ample room to learn from each other. He hopes that the contacts he will have with Spanish authorities during his stay in Madrid will “lay the foundations for collaboration agreements” in the areas of humanitarian action and biomedical research.
In an example of how health can be an important element of ‘soft diplomacy’, Al Rabeeah referred to the aid he has begun to send to Yemen and expressed his hope that this initiative will go “further” and serve to make progress in resolving the conflict, also taking advantage of the re-establishment of diplomatic relations with Iran.
In this sense, the adviser to the Saudi Royal Household, who was also Minister of Health, expressed his conviction that the agreement with Iran will mark the beginning of a new stage of regional stability that “will also bring development” to the entire Middle East, in which area Saudi Arabia makes no secret of its desire to play a leading role.
Al Rabeeah took advantage of his speech to list the work carried out so far by the King Salman Centre for Relief and Humanitarian Action, which has signed 34 agreements with different international organisations and is developing 2,400 projects in 92 countries around the world. He also stressed the importance of the establishment of a vaccine manufacturing centre in Saudi Arabia, in collaboration with the multinational pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Moderna.
