Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi has called for carrying out a comprehensive package of public health check-ups for students before start of the new educational year, explaining in this context that the envisaged check-ups are meant to promote the health and safety of students through testing for non-communicable diseases in addition to coronavirus.
The president’s directives to this effect came during his meeting on Monday with Prime Minister Moustafa Madbouli and a group of Cabinet ministers and top government officials, Presidency Spokesman Ambassador Bassam Radi said.
The meeting was devoted to a review of the current scene of the coronavirus pandemic at both domestic and global levels, Spokesman Radi said.
In this context, the meeting featured a review of the Health Ministry’s measures to pursue the balanced approach that the state has been adopting in dealing with the virus crisis, especially including the provision of anti-Covid-19 vaccines by means of local manufacturing or importation, Spokesman Radi said.
In remarks during the meeting, the president said that conducting such packages comes with a view to checking on the health and safety of students, including the detection of coronavirus, hepatitis C, hypertension, diabetes, obesity, low eye-sight and other diseases, in addition to concomitantly preparing a precise database.
The president also called for expanding the implementation of the Egyptian Women’s Health Initiative and strengthening co-operation with international centres specialised in oncology to promote local capabilities in detection, diagnosis and treatment protocols.
He also called for setting out an integrated map for all apparatuses of relevance to the medical sector nationwide to achieve the required harmony and integration inter se and to forestall any duplication of efforts in extending diagnostic and therapeutic services to citizens within the framework of the relevant presidential initiatives.
In other directives he gave during the meeting, President Sisi stressed the importance of continuing to pay the necessary attention to developing the professional training to qualify human cadres to deal with modern medical equipment in the acquisition of various installations.
Action to this end, the president explained, ensures the provision of the best medical services to citizens, be they diagnostic or therapeutic, as part of the state’s policy of promoting the health and safety of citizens.
The president also reviewed the efforts of the Ministry of Health to maximise co-operation with African countries in the provision of health services, especially by dispatching medical convoys and trainers exchanging expertise and offering the highest-level health services to Africans in Egypt.
Earlier in the day on Monday, Prime Minister Madbouli had chaired a meeting of the Supreme Committee for the Management of Coronavirus Crisis on Monday. In remarks during the meeting, the prime minister said that the government is planning to vaccinate those in the university education sector, including students, academic staff members, employees and workers in implementation of the relevant directives of President Sisi, Cabinet Spokesman Nader Saad said.
Within the framework of those directives, PM Madbouli noted, the vaccination plan will also cover the pre-university education sector with its teachers, staff and workers so that the next school year can start safely and free of worries over the spread of the virus, the Cabinet spokesman said.
