Egypt’s malpractice law is taking a toll on medical emergencies where funding has placed a limit on availability of amenities in the hospitals for proper patient care.
Many doctors have voiced fear over the drafted medical malpractice law that intends to address patients’ complaints about poor treatment by imposing punitive measures, including fines and the detention of doctors who give substandard care.
Medical practitioners say underfunding and inefficiency in Egypt’s healthcare system has put a strain on doctors and that the malpractice law could harm an already strained system by driving doctors abroad or out of the profession entirely.
An anesthesiologist who is now practising in Germany, Hisham Ezzat said the quality of Egypt’s healthcare system has been declining over decades adding that adding that many Egyptian hospitals lack the tools and equipment deemed necessary abroad, so doctors are trained to work with whatever they have to save their patients.
Public hospitals often operate on shoestring budgets, with doctors reporting out-of-pocket payments for essential supplies like gloves and sutures.
Doctors have said the the new law will establish a rivalry between doctors and patients instead of trying to build trust between them,” said a source at the Egyptian Medical Syndicate, the main doctors’ association.
Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly said the draft malpractice law, which lawmakers are to vote on within weeks, aims to balance the rights of doctors and patients and address long-standing grievances.
Egyptian doctors are currently prosecuted under the penal code, which is a blunt instrument when it comes to medical errors, the health ministry’s spokesperson, Hossam Abdel Ghaffar, told Reuters.
Egypt has just 12.8 physicians per 10,000 population, according to official statistics, compared to the global density, opens new tab of physicians of 17.2 per 10,000 people, in 2022.
The situation is so critical that the health directorate in the coastal governorate of Damietta recently called on retired doctors to return to work so it could provide safe services.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF), which is lending Egypt $8 billion, described its healthcare infrastructure as “below other emerging markets” and repeatedly called for structural reforms, including in healthcare, to spur growth.
A gastroenterologist who is now working in Saudi Arabia and earning 27 times the salary of Egypt’s lowest paid consultants of around 12,000 Egyptian pounds ($237) per month described the law as a distraction from underfunding and inadequate training.
Former Medical Syndicate board member Dr. Tarek Mansour, said the new legislation fails to distinguish between “expected complications, minor errors, and gross negligence” exposing doctors to penalties even for unavoidable outcomes, another
