Minister of Health, Hala Zayed, announced the launch of the second phase of President Abdel Fattah Al-Fattah Al-Sisi's initiative under the slogan ‘100 million Health' during her visit to Ismailia governorate on Saturday. The initiative aims to scan people to detect hepatitis C virus, as well as communicable and non-communicable diseases. The Governor of Ismailia Hamdy Othman, and Mohab Mamish, chief of Suez Canal Authority, were present in the inauguration ceremony. In October, Al-Sisi launched a seven-month initiative for conducting medical check-ups for hepatitis C as well as communicable and non-communicable diseases. The initiatives' two phases target about 45 to 52 million people nationwide, aiming to eliminate hepatitis C by the end of 2020. The second phase will be applied in 11 governorates, including Cairo, Suez, Kafr El-Sheikh, Menoufia, Beni Suef, Suhag, Aswan, Red Sea, North Sinai, and Luxor. Over 20 million people were targeted in the second phase which is set to last until the end of February. Egypt is the most affected nation by hepatitis C virus (HCV) and needs a comprehensive characterisation of HCV epidemiology to inform the scale-up of treatment and prevention programmes, according to a new study published by Nature's Scientific Reports journal. The country has achieved significant progress in curing hepatitis C, according to the World Health Organisation, after curing about two million patients in the country, at the lowest production cost of medicine worldwide, $78, which unlocked the prospect of medical tourism in the country.
