During the activities of the first day of Africa Health ExCon Conference 2023, we had an exclusive one on one with the Founding Dean for the Faculty of Medicine at New Giza University to discuss women and child’s related healthcare services and get the scoop on her part in the conference and her remarks about the healthcare system in Egypt and Africa.
What is your vision for the current healthcare system involving women and children in Africa, particularly Egypt? And what do you suggest to improve the situation?
Within the past few years, in Africa and Egypt, financial allocations to the health sector have increased, but sadly most countries in Africa still lack financial allocations or receive much less financial funding than other countries worldwide.
Africa, in general, and Sub-Saharan Africa, in particular, are far from achieving their health indicators and sustainable Development Goals in 2030.
Affected by the Corona pandemic, there has been a significant decline in Egypt in all indicators, whether economic, social, or health, including maternity and childhood indicators.
After being one of the top 10 countries in the world to reduce the number of maternal and newborn deaths and achieve many indicators, reaching its peak in 2016, and maintaining these results for years, Egypt’s progress hit a major setback, starting from 2020 due to the spread of Covid, the Russian-Ukrainian war, and the global economic crisis.
Unfortunately, the system is currently unqualified to anticipate and withstand disasters and thus begins to act after their occurrence and starts searching for causes and solutions to those disasters through the responsible parties.
This linear thinking and rigid mentality will only set us back; we shouldn’t wait for problems to happen to start making changes. We must shift to a broader way of thinking and always be prepared for untimely catastrophes. The government should design properly funded health systems that are resilient and able to survive natural disasters and wars, recover fast, and try and meet Egypt’s 2030 vision.
Another important issue we face in Egypt and Africa, in general, is receiving inaccurate and conflicting data from different sources. And that, of course, has to change as authorities need to collect unified information to come up with fast and efficient solutions.
In your opinion, how did the latest presidential initiatives related to health care in Egypt help develop the health system in Egypt?
The latest presidential initiatives undoubtedly played a major role, especially in the early detection of anemia, dwarfism, breast cancer, and obesity.
These initiatives gave a strong momentum to developing childhood and motherhood healthcare, but their positive impacts remain in constantly working to expand their role, taking advantage of the financial funding. Political leadership must push to transform the initiatives into regular services within the health system, otherwise, when those initiatives and funding come to an end, we could return to the starting point.
Are there initiatives implemented or underway at the University of New Giza for health care for women and female students?
There aren’t initiatives specifically dedicated to the health care of women and children, but we have remarkably high student activity, where students visit medical centers through university medical convoys or in partnership with NGOs in neighboring centers such as Badrasheen and Kafr Tormos in Giza Governorate and similar centers in Fayoum Governorate to carry out awareness campaigns and seminars against harassment hosting experts and specialists in the field, and with help from campus security.
In addition, New Giza’s management started internal initiatives to detect diabetes for students, all faculty members, and other university employees.
Moreover, we celebrate all international and state initiatives, such as World Hypertension Day and World Diabetes Day, and we conduct regular check-ups on these diseases.
Also, the university participates once or twice a year in blood donation campaigns with the blood bank powered by the Ministry of Health; the bank sent the university a thank you letter to honor us as the most participating university in terms of the number of blood donors annually.
We are very proud to have students who are aware of the importance of community participation as humane acts of kindness first and also at the professional level through their various volunteer work and frequent participation in medical campaigns, which elevates their work resume.
Can you tell us about your latest participation at Africa Health ExCon?
Sure, I joined a session entitled “Women, Children, and Adolescent Health” that shed light on motherhood and childhood in general.
Through my participation, I talked about the sustainable development goals and my vision of how we can direct our efforts to continuously develop the healthcare system and mitigate the impacts of Covid, the Ukrainian-Russian war, the bad economy, and the devaluation of the Egyptian currency against the US dollar.
I also presented creative ideas on how Egyptian leaders and authorities could improve their thinking process to become more comprehensive so we can anticipate and be ready for any obstacles that face the Egyptian state.
***About Lamiaa Mohsen***
Besides heading the medicine department at New Giza University, Dr. Mohsen is a national and international expert in Maternal and Child Health systems development, Child protection and child’s rights, and Higher education.
She worked with various governmental, national, and international agencies in the fields of health care, education, maternal and child welfare, and human resource development.
Lamiaa also worked with USAID and European Union projects in Indonesia, Jordan, Yemen, and Syria on programs specifically designed to help them achieve MDGs.
Written by Nada El-Margoushy
