Hassan Al-Masry - Cairo

Like most peoples of the earth, Egyptians are not louder than talking about the Corona virus (Covid-19), especially with the rapid spread of the virus around the world.

Egypt did not witness a widespread outbreak of the virus, according to government data, where the Ministry of Health announced on Saturday that it had recorded 40 new cases of Corona virus and 6 deaths, bringing the number to 576 infected and 36 deaths.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Health revealed the isolation of several cities and villages in ten provinces, to prevent the spread of the Corona virus, which has so far caused dozens of deaths and hundreds of infections, but he did not mention the areas covered by this decision, according to his press statements.

Despite these low official figures compared to the affected countries, fear has dominated the Egyptian street, whose popular memory stores the ancestral conversations of epidemics and diseases that have spread in Egypt, past and present, and thousands of Egyptians have died.


Pharaohs and tuberculosis

Tuberculosis or tuberculosis is one of the oldest epidemics known to the ancient Egyptians, which claimed the lives of millions of people in various countries of the world throughout history, even killing about a quarter of the population of Europe in the nineteenth century, and the World Health Organization considered it one of the most dangerous epidemic diseases that are difficult to overcome.

In his book "The Story of Sickness and Microbes", the Egyptian researcher Mohamed Gohar says, "The effects of tuberculosis are seen in the mummies of the ancient Egyptians, and the common phrase (licorice gnaws its bones) If it applies to something, it applies to what the germ of this disease causes in the bones. ".

Gohar explained that the scientists found the effects of tuberculosis decay in the spine of many Egyptian mummies, noting that tracking the results of the nucleic acid analyzes of many mummies - some dating back to about four thousand years BC - showed scientists that the disease had killed many ancient Egyptians.

Schistosoma and evil spirits
In 1910, the English scientist Armmond Rover published in the British Medical Journal the results of his research on ancient Egyptian mummies dating back to 1200 BC, explaining that she was infected with schistosomiasis.

The ancient Egyptian knew schistosomiasis, and he believed that it was because of evil spirits, which scientists have observed in many papyri which revealed that the ancient Egyptian called schistosomiasis "Aaa", according to the Ebers papyrus, a medical papyrus written by the Pharaohs in 1550 BC.

The papyrus showed how to prevent infection with schistosomiasis, found in fresh water and swamps, and even reached treatment with the use of antimony salts, later known as the 19th century, as "vomiting tartar" in the treatment of schistosomiasis.

According to the World Health Organization, both intestinal and urinary schistosomiasis are found in Egypt, but intestinal schistosomiasis - which causes liver disease - prevails in the Nile Delta in northern Egypt, while schistosomiasis that affects the urinary system is prevalent in the Nile Valley from southern Cairo to aswan and south of it.

Egypt witnessed a major campaign to eradicate the disease in the eighties and nineties of the last century, and television advertisements were repeating to the Egyptians around the clock warnings about the danger of bathing in canal waters that lead to schistosomiasis infection.


Mustardic intensity

In the Fatimid era, epidemics appeared in Egypt due to the absence of the Nile flood for seven years, which led to the emergence of drought, poverty and epidemics, and historians described it as "the Mustansirid intensity" in relation to the Fatimid caliph Al-Mustansir in God.

In his book “Benefit and Consideration,” says Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi, known as Ibn al-Labbad. “Epidemics and plagues were frequent in Islamic Egypt to provide the predisposing factors for their occurrence. If the water spoil, its mold and stagnation, the first new flood caused the epidemic. "

According to some historians, it occurred in that period of marvels that the mind refuses to believe it, according to the historian Ibn Iyas, "The man used to take the son of his neighbor and slaughter and eat it, and people became on the streets if the strong were strong on the weak, slaughtering and eating it."

Big death

The plague struck Egypt again via ships coming from abroad, especially at the time of the outbreak in Europe, while its time was known as the Great Death, and its time caused the death of about 900,000 Egyptians in the months of Shaaban and Ramadan only between 1347 and 1349 AD, and a time of panic and economic conditions worsened Because of the outbreak, according to the Egyptian historian Ibn Iyas.


Cholera

Cholera came to be one of the most severe epidemics on Egyptians after the plague, as the epidemic spread its teeth in Egypt in 1831, and in only two months the cholera claimed the lives of 150,000 Egyptians.

In 1895, the Egyptians were on a date with cholera again through the traders ’trips and visitors to Egypt from abroad, where the disease appeared in Damietta Governorate, and expressions were written on the passports of ships and sailboat certificates to warn of an outbreak of the disease, such as“ There are Asian cholera in Damietta, but public health in the rest of Egyptian cities are good, according to Damietta in Modern History, by Egyptian researcher Radi Mohamed Goda.

The disease returned again to spread from its teeth in 1947, when it appeared in the village of Al-Qurain in the Sharkia Governorate, and the number of injuries reached about 20,000, about half of whom died, but the situation was controlled after about 6 weeks, during which foreign aid flowed to Egypt to limit the spread of the disease.


Hepatitis C

In 2008, official data revealed that one out of every 10 Egyptians was infected with the hepatitis C virus, which caused about 40,000 Egyptians to die annually.

Nobody realized at the time that the reason was due to wrong procedures related to treatment of schistosomiasis that struck the country throughout the twentieth century, as the disease spread in conjunction with the government’s mass treatment campaigns to reuse needles designated to treat schistosomiasis more than once with more than one person.

With the advancement of methods of treatment and the trend of Egypt to eliminate it completely, the incidence of the disease has decreased to large levels, according to the World Health Organization, where Egypt, in cooperation with international organizations, launched a campaign to eliminate the disease inside the country.