CAIRO - 30 December 2023: With only hours left for the year 2023 to conclude, Egypt considers 2023 a year of health achievements.
In the below lines, et highlights the remarkable achievements made by Egypt in the health sector:
- The first certificate in the world granted to Egypt for being free of Hepatitis C:
Since early 2000, Egypt has been strengthening its national programs in the areas of prevention and treatment, and the country established the National Committee for Hepatitis Control, an administrative structure responsible for supervising and directing the national response to hepatitis.
Starting in 2014, the President of Egypt launched a national campaign to eliminate hepatitis, which was strengthened again in 2018. The campaign provided tests to detect and treat the hepatitis C virus without financial compensation.
Egypt succeeded in moving from a country with one of the highest rates of hepatitis C infection in the world to a country with one of the lowest rates, by reducing the prevalence of hepatitis C from 10% to 0.38% in a period of just over a decade.
At the foot of the pyramid, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization, handed President Sisi the golden certificate declaring Egypt free of Virus C, so that the pyramids would bear witness to this great achievement.
The World Health Organization (WHO) congratulated Egypt on its unprecedented progress towards eliminating hepatitis C, becoming the first country to reach the “gold level” on the path to eliminating hepatitis C according to WHO standards.
Achieving the gold level means that Egypt has fulfilled the programming requirements that lead to reducing number of new infections and deaths resulting from hepatitis C to levels that qualify the country to eliminate the hepatitis C epidemic.
Globally, there are 58 million people living with chronic hepatitis C infection. Although there is no vaccine available for the disease, it can be cured by taking short-term, highly effective treatments that last 8-12 weeks. However, there are 4 out of 5 people living with hepatitis C. The liver C of the world do not realize that they have an infection, and that infection can cause liver disease or cancer, unless it is treated or cured.
Egypt diagnosed 87% of people living with hepatitis C, and provided curative treatment to 93% of people diagnosed with it, which exceeds the goals set for the organization’s gold level, which is diagnosing at least 80% of people living with hepatitis C, and providing treatment to at least About 70% of people diagnosed with it.
- Launching the 100 Days of Health initiative:
On June 25, 2023, under the patronage of President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, the “100 Health Days” initiative was launched, which is a result of the services of the “100 Million Health” presidential initiative, and aims to expand the provision of all public health initiative services, and intensify work over a period of time of 100 days.
The Egyptian Observatory, affiliated with the Egyptian Center for Strategic Thought and Studies, stated that the presidential health initiatives that were launched during the past few years contributed to strengthening the health system, after long years in which the Egyptian citizen suffered from health neglect.
These initiatives also contributed to achieving comprehensive health care through focusing on combating diseases that most affect citizens; With the aim of reducing their prevalence and mortality rates, such as: infectious diseases (viral hepatitis, schistosomiasis, and tuberculosis), and chronic non-communicable diseases (heart, diabetes, and kidney failure), and to continue the process of achieving integrated health care for every citizen, the “100 Health Days” initiative was launched.
The initiative includes more than 500 convoys, 5,000 basic care units, and 700 hospitals nationwide. The initiative will be located in: vital places, health units, clinics and mobile convoys, and includes providing free family planning, reproductive health and women’s health services, in addition to providing 6 mobile cars to provide the “mammogram” service, and services to support women’s health such as awareness of breast self-examination. It has also been provided A car to provide magnetic resonance examination services, which is the first of its kind in Africa, and 3 cars to provide CT scan services, while providing treatment decisions at state expense.
- Egypt provides 3 new oral medications to treat most difficult types of breast cancer for free:
Dr. Lubna Ezz Al-Arab, Professor and Head of the Department of Oncology at Ain Shams Medicine, said that there has been a breakthrough in treatment, and the state has provided safe treatments with limited side effects. They are directed tablets, not chemical, that do not cause nausea or hair loss. These tablets have different types and they all lead to the same result from the same class. It stops the division of the cancer cell and stops its activity. It is safe, so it can be taken at the age of 80 to 85 years, and it has no side effects on the patient.
She explained that Egypt provides these treatments free of charge at the expense of the state and health insurance to breast cancer patients, and they are taken orally in the form of tablets.
She confirmed that the presidential initiative had achieved success in early detection of breast cancer, adding that we had previously discovered breast cancer in the late stages, currently in the third or fourth stage, and after the presidential initiatives, we began to detect breast cancer in the first and second stages, and the prevalence rates decreased.
- In 2023, the 2nd phase of the initiative for early detection of cancerous tumors launched:
In 2023, the second phase of the President’s initiative for early detection of cancerous tumors (lung, prostate, colon, cervix) was launched for free in 9 governorates, under the slogan 100 Million Health.
The second phase of work on the initiative includes 9 governorates (Cairo, Menoufia, Red Sea, Kafr El-Sheikh, Sohag, Ismailia, Beni Suef, North Sinai, Luxor), while the first phase included the governorates of (Alexandria, Beheira, Matrouh, Damietta, Qalyubia, Fayoum, Assiut, South Sinai, Port Said), as the initiative to detect cancerous tumors targets citizens aged 18 years and over, with the aim of detecting the disease in the early stages, thus reducing deaths resulting from it, and reducing the financial burden in late cases.
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