On May 18th 2018, Mohamed Awad, a doctor in Sahel Teaching Hospital got beaten by one of the patient’s family members; it was claimed that the patient’s family could not find a place in the emergency room. The incident left Awad with a fractured nose. On January 28th 2016, two doctors got assaulted by police officers after one of the doctors, Moamen Abdel-Azzem, refused to fabricate a medical report for one of the officers in Matariya Hospital. According to many doctors, beatings by angry patients constitute the daily reality of any doctor working in any public hospital in Egypt, from Cairo to Alexandria to Sharqia and other governorates. However, these incidents rarely get any coverage, and there hasn’t been concrete steps to solve the root of the issue, simply because it hasn’t been identified yet. In an email interview with Egyptian Streets, Soha Bayoumi, a lecturer in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University, whose research addresses the question of social justice with a focus on health in the Middle East, said that the official media discourse has been blaming doctors for the deteriorating state of healthcare…
Doctors in Egypt’s Hospitals Get Beaten Everyday. Who Is to Blame?
September 11, 2018
