Between prosecutions due to accusations of professional errors, and the emigration of large numbers of them during the past years or their cessation of work in the government sector, doctors in Egypt suffer from difficult conditions, which prompted their union to repeatedly demand its reform.
The adoption of a law defining medical liability is one of the most important demands that doctors insist on in Egypt, “as a basis for protecting both the patient and the doctor,” according to the representative of the Medical Syndicate and member of the Egyptian Senate, Najwa Al-Shafei, in her interview with Al-Hurra.
Al-Shafei criticized that “doctors stand before criminal courts according to the ordinary penal code and not according to a law of their own, as happens anywhere in the world.”
She says, “Doctors cannot continue to stand before the courts according to the Penal Code, which prosecutes those who committed a murder or assaulted another person. Situations are different, and we are not talking about a doctor who killed or assaulted, but rather we are talking about a doctor who made a mistake during surgery or complications occurred, which is something It could happen anywhere in the world.”
The most important necessities determined by the Egyptian Medical Syndicate are represented in the law that they demand that imprisonment be limited to those who practice the medical profession without a license or outside the framework of their specialization, and that there be medical qualitative committees that examine cases and decide medical responsibility on the doctor, in addition to imposing material compensation on doctors. After issuing the report of the Medical Liability Committee, and it is paid from a compensation fund related to this matter.
The syndicate submitted its observations and demands to the Egyptian Parliament and announced that it would address the President of the Republic with them as well.
Al-Shafei believes that “medical complications are linked to the medical profession everywhere in the world, and there are countries where the number of deaths as a result of medical complications ranges from 100,000 to 102,000 annually, and doctors do not stand before criminal courts as it happens, and the issue of compensation is also an important issue because Every doctor pays annual subscriptions, and they must be responsible for compensation through a special fund in the event that the competent committees conclude that there is something that requires compensation.
Among the most prominent claims in the law is “working in a safe environment,” as Al-Shafei notes that “assaults against medical staff in hospitals have become a very negative and recurring phenomenon, without increasing the penalty for those who commit the crime of assaulting a doctor in a hospital or medical facility.”
She added that “failing to tighten the penalties has led to the ease and repetition of this reality, while some other countries hang banners at the entrance of their facilities stating that assaulting members of the medical staff is a crime punishable by long prison terms of up to ten years.”
The proposed medical liability law is still in the Egyptian parliament, after it was submitted by 60 Egyptian parliamentarians.
12 doctors quit every day
Official statistics indicate that the number of doctors who left and resigned from government work in 2022 set a record, reaching 4,261 male and female doctors, which means the resignation of an average of 12 doctors per day.
The syndicate stated that this number of doctors applied for a free doctor certificate, meaning that they do not work in government agencies, up from 4,127 in 2021.
The number of doctors who have resigned from the government sector has been increasing in recent years, as the number was 1044 doctors in 2016, 2549 doctors in 2017, 2612 doctors in 2018, then 3507 resignations in 2019, and 2968 doctors in 2020.
The Undersecretary of the Medical Syndicate believes that these indicators “are due to several reasons, the first of which is low wages and the general environment for doctors’ work, and the insecure climate that besieges doctors while they work in government hospitals,” noting that this led to a significant increase in the deficit in the number of doctors working in Egypt during past years.
She explains that while “about 220,000 male and female doctors are officially registered in the syndicate’s records, they practice medicine, but the reality indicates that the total number of working doctors does not exceed 85,000 male and female doctors, which is a very large deficit.”
Al-Shafei asserts that “there are matters that must be implemented immediately to protect the medical sector and doctors in Egypt, including the speedy issuance of the Medical Liability Law and harsher penalties for those who attack doctors, in addition to examining wages so as not to exacerbate the situation further.”
Exodus of doctors
Al-Shafei also warned that failure to address the problems of doctors will cause them to emigrate abroad.
According to the Syndicate, Egypt ranks third, after Jordan and Sudan, in the ranking of countries from which doctors emigrate in the Middle East, “and the percentage of Egyptian doctors emigrating to England in the past years has risen to 200 percent.”
At the level of elderly retired doctors, the Medical Syndicate called for an increase in the pensions of human doctors, dentists, pharmacists and veterinarians to 1,500 pounds instead of 1,000 pounds due to the economic conditions that Egypt is going through.
The Undersecretary of the Physicians Syndicate hopes that attention will be paid to the cases that doctors suffer from and their problems will be resolved, “at least those related to legal prosecution through the approval of the Medical Liability Law to stop the bleeding of disability and immigration, which is increasing at high rates.”