CAIRO: Earlier this month, people were shocked to hear of a fire in the newborn, incubator unit in the Al Shatby hospital in Alexandria. Four died as a result of the fire, along with some 50 children exposed to the disaster.
The tragedy raised the issue of the efficiency of the Egyptian health care sector in Egypt. The Daily Star Egypt took to the streets to gauge peoples’ opinions on the health care sector in Egypt.
Health-care in Egypt is very bad; it has no real supervision. Each doctor can work in two or three places to earn more money. The management of the hospitals is also not professional. They are just physicians who are old enough to be managers with no real management skills.Mohammed, dentist
Talking about health insurance is exactly like talking about dinosaurs in the third millennium. There is no real health insurance, and to have good medical care you have to pay. We have good doctors and good hospitals with excellent care but this is not for free. Today, it is “you pay, you get. I pay when I park my car so why shouldn’t I pay when I search for good medical care?Kariman, housewife
We have very low skilled medical professionals. Our medical schools don’t produce qualified physicians. They produce good medical students but not physicians. Those fresh graduates only care about work and money. They don’t care about having enough training to be able to deal with patients. Ahmad, teacher
As a civil servant I have my monthly medication for free. Without that I wouldn’t be able to live. I receive medications worth LE 300 a month that are necessary to maintain my life. I think it is enough for the government to supply people with basic health care. Those who need more should pay for it.Nagy, civil servant
The medical problem in Egypt is strange. Each medical care system includes three levels. These are primary, secondary and tertiary health care. We have very good secondary and tertiary health care, like the cancer hospitals and epidemic hospitals. These two levels give their services to less than 5 percent of the population because they are too specialized. What we really lack is the primary health care, which is supposed to be given to 100 percent of the population.Omayma, accountant
I think that university hospitals are the best. They provide very good care and they are run by university professors. Even the young students there take care of the patients because they know that there is very strict supervision from the professors. I tried it and I also tried the health insurance services, and I can say that health insurance is an illusion.Hussein, taxi driver and civil servant
There are good physicians but very bad nurses. Nurses are overloaded with work, not to mention that because they feel they are neglected, they neglect the patients. I think that if we had better nursing teams we would have a better health care system.Hussein, student
The views expressed in Word on the Street do not necessarily reflect the views of The Daily Star Egypt.
