Egypt's Minister of Health, Hala Zayed, on Tuesday announced that more than 7 million citizens were scanned in the second phase of President Abdel Fattah Al-Fattah Al-Sisi's initiative for combating hepatitis C and communicable and non-communicable diseases. The seven-month initiative, under the slogan ‘100 million Health', was launched in October 2018. Zayed noted that a total about 19.6 million citizens were scanned since the beginning of the initiative in October. All the scanned citizens have received free medication. According to a statement from the ministry's spokesperson Khaled Mogahed, about 400,619 secondary school students have been checked up in the initiative in nine governorates so far. He added that Alexandria is still the most active governorate in terms of the number of students who took part in the initiative as 84,745 students have been scanned there. Mogahed further explained that about 6.5 million people were scanned in the second phase of the initiative. Cairo was the most active governorate for general participation in the initiative as about 2.3 million citizens have been scanned. The presidential initiative targets scanning more than 20 million people in the second phase which is set to last until the end of February. The check-ups of the two phases of the initiative target about 45-52 million people in all governorates, aiming to eliminating hepatitis C by the end of 2020.
