Close to 21 million women have so far benefitted from the Egyptian Women’s Health Initiative which set off in July 2019, the Ministry of Health has announced today. The campaign which targets women aged 18 and above, includes free examination and raising awareness on general health for women.
Since it was launched, the presidential Initiative has sent out 1,500,000 SMSs to promote regular monitoring of women’s health, said Hossam Abdel-Ghaffar, spokesperson for Egypt’s Ministry of Health. Mr Abdel-Ghaffar noted that the 100 Million Healths hotline 15335 received some 117,000 calls inquiring about the women’s health initiative.
Ahmed Mursi, Executive Director of the Egyptian Women’s Health Initiative, said that the Initiative detects non-communicable diseases (NCD) including diabetes, hyper tension, weight and height measurement, body mass indices, and levels of obesity and overweight, and offers awareness on the risk factors that can cause non-communicable diseases. It also investigates signs of breast cancer. Furthermore, the Initiative raises awareness on reproductive health, family planning and breast self-examination methods.
Dr Mursi said that 3538 health units are at hand across the country to offer the examination service to women, and that those whose condition requires advanced investigation or who need medical treatment are referred to any of the 114 participating hospitals. The location of the health units are available at the Initiative’s official website www.100millionseha.eg, or through the hotline.
According to Dr Mursi, 5926 women have been diagnosed with breast cancer through the Initiative. Cases that need further investigation are referred to specialised hospitals where they they are given scans or pathological tests, each according to her need; 406,130 cases were so far referred to specialists for further investigations. Dr Mursi said that 14 specialised Ministry of Health centres are currently equipped to treat the women diagnosed with breast cancer free of charge with the latest international protocols, in addition to 13 new hospitals affiliated the Supreme Council for University Hospitals which run the same protocols.
Dr Musri explained that the infrastructure of the Initiative is constantly being upgraded, with new hospitals and labs joining the fleet. He also stressed the importance of enhancing the skills and efficiency of the service providers themselves, pointing out that more than 20,000 members of medical teams including physicians, nurses and technicians received training. Not only that, but administrative staff participating in the Initiative were also trained in order to ensure a tight efficient medical service.
The Egyptian Women’s Health Initiative in fact runs under the umbrella of a much larger initiative, “100 Million Healths” that was launched by President Sisi in October 2018; it was first launched for mass screening and treatment of Hepatitis C (HCV), and NCDs, but further expanded into other diseases once the HCV objective was attained.
Under 100 Million Healths run other health initiatives that include treatment of chronic diseases, and early detection of renal impairment. All initiatives are electronically linked to one database that include patients’ data, and all the initiatives operate in the same health units to ease procedures on the service seekers.
Watani International
5 December 2021