Egypt's Minister of Health and Population, Khaled Abdel Ghaffar; received on Wednesday, the Ambassador of Italy to Egypt, Michael Caron; and the delegation of the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation in Cairo "AICS". The Italian delegation briefed the Egyptian minister on a detailed report on the results and outputs of the second phase of the project to support the improvement of nursing services, which aimed to train 5,400 nursing personnel and organize 340 training courses for nursing staff in the governorates of (Port Said, Ismailia, Luxor, Aswan, South Sinai). He was also briefed on the early detection of more than 2,000 children, at the Pediatric Heart Clinic, at the Health Technical Institute in Port Said Governorate, and a discussion of the preparation for launching the project in its third phase in the governorates (Cairo, Giza, and Alexandria). The minister appreciated the efforts of cooperation between the Egyptian and Italian sides in improving the efficiency of nursing teams and nursing services in the health system, in addition to discussing and strengthening cooperation in the file of medical devices and tools, as well as the provision of nursing supplies. Hossam Abdel Ghaffar, the official spokesperson for the Ministry of Health and Population, said that the meeting touched on discussing cooperation in developing nursing curricula (practical and theoretical), as a medical team was formed, including 12 Egyptian experts and a number of prominent Italian and British experts in the nursing file. The project aims at developing a specific plan aimed at developing curricula and stressing that development focuses on individual care, which contributes to graduating cadres capable of providing treatment, rehabilitation and health education. Abdel Ghaffar added that the minister stressed that the training programs play a significant role in raising the expertise of the nursing teams, and they are considered an essential partner for doctors in providing medical service to patients, expressing his great happiness with the success of the first and second phases of the Egyptian-Italian project. The project "UNISS" was implemented in 3 phases, as it started as a first phase in 2016, for the benefit of the Health Technical Institute in Port Said Governorate under the title "Technical Assistance Program in the Nursing School." The second phase included the governorates (Luxor, Aswan, South Sinai, Ismailia), which was completed recently, in the context of improving the nursing level and the nursing education field in Egypt.
