CAIRO: A decree by the Minister of Health prohibiting employment discrimination against people infected with Hepatitis C has been welcomed as a “positive but incomplete step” by an Egyptian NGO. Health minister decree 371 provided that infection with the virus “does not compromise medical fitness for appointment to all positions as long as the liver's functions are within normal levels and there are no complications limiting the job candidate's ability to perform the functions of the post he is applying for.” The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) welcomed the decree but said that it didn't go far enough to end employment discrimination against others because of their health status, such as HIV positive individuals or people infected with Hepatitis B. Egypt has the highest prevalence of Hepatitis C in the world, with an estimated 10–20 percent of the population infected with the disease, according to a 2010 study conducted by Benha University and published in The Croatian Medical Journal. “The right to health and the right to work are fundamental underpinnings of the human rights system,” Alaa Ghanem, director of EIPR's right to health program, said in a statement issued Tuesday. “This system guarantees the right of all citizens to healthcare as well as protecting their right to work — a right laid down in the Egyptian Constitution.” A decree issued in 1983 defined medical fitness and the effect of complications on the ability to work into three categories. EIPR said that despite the fact that Hepatitis C did not fall into any of these categories government and private employers continued to practice policies discriminating against people infected with Hepatitis C as well as HIV positive individuals and those suffering from Hepatitis B — depriving them of both their right to work and their right to healthcare accruing from employment-based health insurance. Ghanem said that past ministerial decrees gave some bodies, such as the Suez Canal Authority, the right to lay down policies discriminating against potential employees based on their health even where their illnesses did not fall into the categories defined under the decree passed in 1983 — “despite the fact that Hepatitis C does not undermine the ability of someone infected with it to work.”
