Egypt's Minister of Health and Population Khaled Abdel Ghaffar has affirmed that the development of the health sector is among the priorities of the Egyptian state, which was evident in the increase in the volume of government spending on the health sector to EGP 222bn, compared to EGP 32bn in 2014. This came in his speech during the opening of the Second edition of the Africa Health ExCon. Abdel Ghaffar referred to the ministry's strategy to develop the health system, which relied on 3 axes (infrastructure development, development of health services, and investment in the human element), explaining that the first axis included the establishment and development of hospitals, medical centres and specialized health units, and the localization of the pharmaceutical industry. The minister pointed out that the President of the Republic ratified the establishment of the new National Heart Institute with a capacity of 490 beds, at a cost of EGP 3bn, in addition to the construction of the new central laboratories building, at a cost of EGP 1.3bn, and the city of psychiatry and addiction treatment and geriatric medicine, with a total capacity of 950 beds, on an area of 50 feddan, at a cost of EGP 5bn, in addition to Umm El-Masryeen Hospital, which is the first hospital to support green building in Egypt, at a cost of EGP 3.8bn. Moreover, the minister pointed out that a number of questions were asked on search platforms that rely on artificial intelligence (Chat GPT), which collects its information from all international institutions and sources, explaining that the answers indicated an improvement in the environmental and living conditions of the Egyptian citizen through a package of projects that have been implemented since 2014 until now. He further added that the population increase is the greatest challenge not only in the health sector but for all sectors, as the population census on 1st June reached 105 million people, according to the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, indicating that the health sector bears a significant burden in terms of population increase, in addition to the burden of health services and the provision of treatment for unhealthy children.
