Egypt's Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research and Acting Minister of Health and Population, Khaled Abdel Ghaffar, met on Monday evening, with Kato Ken, the Chief Representative of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in Egypt, and his accompanying delegation, to discuss strengthening cooperation in the health sector. Hossam Abdel Ghaffar, the official spokesperson for the Ministry of Health and Population, said that the meeting dealt with discussing cooperation between the ministry and JICA to support the implementation of the comprehensive health insurance project. JICA's support to the Egyptian insurance project will amount to $400m starting from 2023. Abdel Ghaffar added that the two sides addressed the cooperation program in support of hospital quality systems, which started from May 2019 and will continue until 2024, with a total of 50 hospitals in different governorates. The program aims at improving services provided to patients by allocating supervisory teams to follow up and train those in charge of implementing comprehensive quality standards. Moreover, Abdel Ghaffar stated that the minister stressed the importance of cooperation with JICA in supporting human resources capabilities in the comprehensive health insurance system in order to implement comprehensive health coverage policies, through training and refining the skills of workers. He further affirmed that the minister pointed to the continuation of cooperation with JICA and the maximization of ways to benefit from the exchange of experiences. The meeting also touched upon discussing cooperation opportunities between JICA and the Supreme Council of University Hospitals in Egypt. Ways to increase cooperation between the Egyptian Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Center for Disease Control in the Japanese capital, Tokyo, was also discussed during the meeting. The meeting was attended by Ahmed El-Sobky, the Assistant Minister of Health for Monitoring and Follow-up Affairs and Head of the Health Care Authority, Hazem El-Fil, Head of the Therapeutic Medicine Sector, and Dalia Rashid, supervisor of grant and loan projects in the Health Ministry.
