Posted by William A. Hasseltin, the American biologist, a lengthy article in the New England Journal of Medicine this month, praising the success of the Egyptian National Program for the detection of viral hepatitis C and noncommunicable diseases, which began in October 2018, and is considered the largest survey campaign in the world, and included more Of the 68 million people who helped detect and treat people with Hepatitis C, high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity, the program was called "100 Million Health."
Egypt suffers from one of the highest rates of infection with hepatitis C virus in the world, and the rate of infections in it in 2010 was estimated at 15% of the population, but it may soon be the first country in the world free of hepatitis C.
And the year 2013 carried more positive news, as the US company Gladi Sciences announced in December 2013 the development of a new vaccine to treat hepatitis C virus called Sofosbuvir «Sofaldi», and the treatment extends for 12 weeks, but its cost is 84 thousand dollars per patient.
And once the company announced its new treatment, the Egyptian government began negotiating with it to purchase large quantities of it at a low price, and the government supported its position in negotiations by providing promises to the company to impose strict restrictions on the way the treatment is administered and give it to patients and register their data on a database, so that it does not It is leaking to the black market.
After painstaking negotiations with the company, the Egyptian government succeeded in reducing the price of the one-patient treatment program to only $ 900, and after obtaining the treatment, it provided it to patients for free, as it launched a website in September 2014, and asked Egyptian citizens to register their names and data on it, to direct them to centers A health center dedicated to conducting laboratory analyzes and receiving treatment for free. Registration began on September 14, 2014, and more than 100,000 people registered their data in the first minute after opening the site. The plan succeeded in treating more than 1.6 million Egyptian patients by 2017, and the recovery rate ranged from 96% to 98%.
Later, the Egyptian government managed to conclude an agreement with the World Trade Organization to exempt it from adhering to the intellectual property rights of these drugs, which gave 20 Egyptian companies the right to produce seven drugs from previous antivirals, and that reduced the cost of treatment borne by the Egyptian government to $ 45 per patient. .
In 2018, the World Bank offered Egypt a $ 530 million loan, half of which is used to strengthen treatment programs for people with Hepatitis C treatment, and the other half is directed to supporting the health system. This encouraged the Egyptian government to increase survey programs to include other chronic diseases, such as high blood pressure and diabetes. With this, the Egyptian government was able on October 1 to launch a national program to detect viral hepatitis C and noncommunicable diseases, which are high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity, and the program was called "100 million health".
“100 million health”
The "100 million health" program lasted for seven months, divided the Egyptian governorates into three stages, and succeeded in examining about 68 million Egyptians. After the success of the program, the government decided to make it a permanent part of the Egyptian health program. It was found that 4% of the citizens who were examined had antibodies to hepatitis C virus, and the program also found that 21% of the people who were tested had high blood pressure, 5% of them had diabetes, and 40% of them were obese.
The World Health Organization supported this program, providing some 5,000 tablets to collect data. The program included examining each person, measuring their weight and height, blood sugar level and blood pressure, and a rapid examination of antibodies to hepatitis C virus.
21% of people examined had high blood pressure, 5% had diabetes and 40% had obesity.