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Editorially curated · sa-national-newborn-screening
National Newborn Screening Program
Screens newborns for 16 inherited endocrine and metabolic disorders to enable presymptomatic intervention and reduce disability.
01 / Project overview
What the record establishes.
- Geographic scope
- Newborns across Saudi Arabia
- Project type
- National public-health genetic and metabolic screening program
- Research domain
- Inherited endocrine and metabolic disease
- Years
- 2005–
- Lifecycle status
- active
- Status basis
- First phase launched in August 2005; by 2018 the program reached 188 hospitals and 97% of births in Ministry of Health hospitals, with continued expansion announced.
- Status evidence date
- 2018-11-22
- Scale
- A 2005-2012 national analysis covered 775,000 newborns from 139 hospitals and identified 743 affected infants; 195,836 samples were screened in 2018 alone.
02 / Organizations and population
Who and what the project connects.
- Lead organizations
- Saudi Ministry of Health
- Partner organizations
- Participating Saudi hospitals
- Organism / population
- Saudi newborns
03 / Data and access
What exists and how it can be reached.
Data types
- biochemical assays
- immunoassays
- confirmatory genetic testing
- newborn clinical data
Data access
National clinical/public-health program; individual data not public
Identifiers
No public accession or identifier is listed for this record.
04 / Evidence and provenance
Why the record is included.
Inclusion basis
Long-running nationwide inherited-disease screening program with hundreds of thousands of newborns and published outcomes.
Editorial note
Primarily biochemical/immunoassay screening rather than whole-genome sequencing. Distinct from the 2025 Baby Genome WGS program and KFSHRC-Rady genome-based newborn screening.
Sources
- primary record source Verified 2026-08-15
- additional record source Verified 2026-08-15
- additional record source Verified 2026-08-15
Release v0.2.0