Dr. Bahaa Helmy: Egypt Is a Pioneer in Rebuilding the Health and Treatment System

The human right to health and treatment is closely linked to a person's life and dignity, and it is one of the fundamental rights guaranteed to every human being. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights addressed this right implicitly in Article 25, which recognizes that everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including medical care, while the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights devotes Article 12 to the human right to health. The Egyptian Constitution provides for every citizen's right to health and to integrated health care, and the State's obligation to raise the efficiency of health facilities' services and to establish a comprehensive health insurance system for all Egyptians covering all diseases. However, the political leadership took the initiative to break through Egypt's health problems to solve them, without waiting long for programs to reform that system to be implemented. The State devoted its efforts to confronting the hepatitis viruses, which had made Egypt the country with the highest infection rate, owing to a lack of awareness of early detection in addition to the high cost of treatment. The first presidential initiative came to detect those infected with hepatitis viruses and treat them at the State's expense, despite the economic circumstances the country is going through, so that 2 million citizens have been treated over the past three years – a refined conduct at the level of humanity and the rights of Egyptians, and of the method of treating them and preserving their health – which caught the attention of the world, and especially the World Health Organization, which considered it a very short time. Then the national campaign was recently announced to detect those suffering from hepatitis C, diabetes and blood pressure, in what are known as communicable diseases, across the Republic according to a time and geographic schedule announced to all, while building a health database for the people of Egypt, targeting 45 to 52 million people including secondary school students, with the necessary treatment dispensed at the expense of health insurance – a first nationally and globally. This led the World Health Organization to declare that Egypt has the strongest national program for treating hepatitis viruses, that it is a strategic initiative applied for the first time in the Middle East region and the world, and that it is a model to be emulated worldwide for implementing a unified methodology that tackles two public problems in Egypt: treating hepatitis C by 2020 and reaching the lowest infection rates in the world, and reducing deaths from non-communicable diseases. It also makes the Egyptian protocol and treatment drugs a good gateway for Africa, Europe and the world to confront these diseases. The political will and determination to uphold the values and principles of Egyptians' human rights, and the sound planning, with the participation of all governors and the relevant bodies, to carry out the national campaign to identify those infected with hepatitis C and for the early detection of non-communicable diseases, together with follow-up and oversight of implementation, are a noteworthy model of how to apply the concepts of the human right to health and treatment without discrimination, in a scientific and planned manner. In fact, matters did not stop there: vaccination of children against the hepatitis C virus had previously been added to the basic vaccination schedule for newborns to immunize them, and a campaign to detect breast cancer had previously been launched across Egypt, along with starting to develop the medical care and health insurance system. Add to this the efforts made to provide drinking water that is used safely and acceptably, and to solve the problem of informal settlements and build civilized residential complexes with full utilities and services. These are bright aspects, not only in the radical solution of endemic health problems and the provision of treatment, clean water and the completion of sewage stations, but also in applying the concepts of human rights on the ground and creating generations who enjoy good health, enabling them to work, strive and concentrate, and lifting the burden from Egyptian citizens, their families and relatives, as well as treatment.