Bilateral health cooperation takes center stage in Egypt-Italy talks

EGYPT — Egypt’s Minister of Health and Population, Khaled Abdel Ghaffar, has held a meeting with the Ambassador of Italy to Egypt, Michael Caron, along with the delegation of the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation in Cairo “AICS,” focused on strengthening bilateral health cooperation between the two countries.

During the meeting, the Italian delegation presented a detailed report on the outcomes of the second phase of the project aimed at enhancing nursing services in the governorates of Port Said, Ismailia, Luxor, Aswan, and South Sinai.

The project had trained 5,400 nursing personnel and organized 340 training courses for nursing staff.

The delegation also discussed the Pediatric Heart Clinic at the Health Technical Institute in Port Said Governorate, which had facilitated the early detection of over 2,000 children. The third phase of the project is set to launch in Cairo, Giza, and Alexandria.

The Minister of Health appreciated the collaboration between the Egyptian and Italian sides in improving the nursing services in the health system.

The two sides also discussed strengthening cooperation in the provision of medical devices and tools, as well as nursing supplies.

In addition, the meeting discussed the development of nursing curricula, both practical and theoretical, with the formation of a medical team consisting of Egyptian, Italian, and British experts in the nursing field.

The aim is to enhance the quality of nursing education in Egypt and graduate cadres capable of providing treatment, rehabilitation, and health education.

According to Hossam Abdel Ghaffar, the official spokesperson for the Ministry of Health and Population, the meeting emphasized the importance of cooperation in developing nursing services and teams, and discussed the means of enhancing the healthcare sector in Egypt.

The objective of the project is to establish a specific plan that emphasizes the development of curricula with a focus on individual care, which will enable the graduates to provide treatment, rehabilitation, and health education.

Abdel Ghaffar emphasized that the training programs play a significant role in enhancing the expertise of nursing teams and enabling them to serve as essential partners to doctors in providing medical care to patients. He expressed his satisfaction with the success of the first and second phases of the Egyptian-Italian project.

The UNISS project was implemented in three phases, with the first phase, titled “Technical Assistance Program in the Nursing School,” benefiting the Health Technical Institute in Port Said Governorate in 2016.

The second phase focused on the governorates of Luxor, Aswan, South Sinai, and Ismailia and was recently completed with the aim of improving the nursing education field and elevating the nursing level in Egypt.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health and Population in Egypt has received a significant boost in its fight against the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), as it has announced the arrival of more than 2 million doses of the modified Pfizer vaccine.

The vaccines arrived in Cairo International Airport via four successive shipments over the past week, provided by eight friendly countries including France, Sweden, and Italy, through the COVAX mechanism in cooperation with the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI).

The modified Pfizer vaccine is effective against mutants of the virus, including Omicron, and will be administered as a booster dose to those who have received previous doses of different types of vaccines.

This will help to diversify and expand the provision of anti-virus vaccines, which is part of the state’s plan to preserve the gains of the Egyptian state in dealing with the pandemic.

The vaccines will be distributed to vaccination centers across all governorates of the republic after necessary analysis by the Egyptian Medicines Authority, and have been approved by both the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Egyptian Drug Authority (EDA).

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