'Another blow to people's rights': Amnesty condemns Egypt's public healthcare privatisation law

Amnesty International condemned on Tuesday a new law on privatising Egypt's public healthcare facilities that will likely jeopardise the accessibility and availability of health services in the country, where about one-third of the nearly 106 million total population is below the poverty line.

The London-based watchdog accused the Egyptian parliament in a statement of "expediting the adoption of the law without adequate consultations with stakeholders and despite serious concerns raised by the Doctors' Syndicate."  

The government-proposed law, approved by the lower-house of the parliament in May and ratified a month later by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, allows local and foreign investors to operate and run public healthcare facilities for a minimum of three years and up to 15.

Despite arguably low-quality services offered at public hospitals, the state healthcare system remains the best option for millions of Egyptians already suffering from the aftermath of an ongoing economic crisis.

"The new law is another blow to people's social and economic rights, which continue to deteriorate… Instead of protecting people's right to health amid the ongoing economic crisis, the government is attempting to evade its obligations at the expense of the poorest who will be most impacted," said Mahmoud Shalaby, Amnesty International's Egypt Researcher.

However, the government argued repeatedly that the bill was meant to improve the quality of services, without elaborating on how local or foreign investors are expected to garner profit in return for investing in Egypt's public healthcare.

Only about 66 per cent of the Egypt's population has access to public health insurance as per last year's official statistics.

"The government of Egypt cannot simply hand over the keys of a struggling public healthcare system to the private sector without clear regulations to ensure that all people living in the country have access to affordable and quality healthcare," Shalaby argued.

Dubbed by news outlets and social media activists as "the rental of Egypt's hospitals," the law commits investors who run public healthcare facilities to keep only 25 per cent of the local workforce, while the health ministry will relocate the remaining medical staff to other institutions.  

The Egyptian Doctors' Syndicate had earlier rejected the bill, arguing that it was likely to jeopardise the professional stability of 75 per cent of the medical personnel at those facilities, which may prompt them to eventually immigrate and seek jobs abroad.

According to a 2022 government study, an average of one doctor is available for every 1,162 citizens in Egypt, at a time when the global average is 23 doctors for each 10,000 people.

In recent years, Egypt witnessed a serious wave of emigration, mostly by physicians, which is believed to have profoundly impacted the quality of healthcare services in the country. 

As hundreds of thousands of Egyptians are offered regular treatments, through the public health insurance system or state-funded approvals, for chronic illness and autoimmune diseases including cancer, kidney failure and multiple sclerosis, their fate after the new law is applied remains unclear.