Rural Health Services Ill–Equipped
Health Minister Mohamed Mustafa Hamed said that 20% of hospitals in the rural south have no doctors, and that only 40% of necessary medicines are available in government hospitals and clinics. Pharmacy students from Mansura University recently treated 400 patients during a trip to Samanoud, in the Governorate of Gharbia, 126km north of Cairo, the capital. “We discovered that the few clinics that existed in this area were only about the walls and the doors – no medicines and no service at all,” said Aly Kishk, one of the pharmacy students. Kawthar Mahmud, head of the health ministry’s nursing administration, said her ministry was dealing with a shortage of 40,000 nurses in the nation’s hospitals and clinics. The Medical Association says that as many as 230,000 doctors are registered with them, but around 30,000 have left to work in other countries. “There is mass migration of doctors from Egypt because of lack of money and tough work conditions in this country’s hospitals,” said Mohamed Hassan Khalil, head of the Right to Medicine Centre, a local NGO that defends the rights of doctors and patients to better work conditions and services.
