Egypt : Complete Profile - What is GIS - World Health Organization

Health Systems Profile- Egypt Regional Health Systems Observatory- EMRO
Chronology and main features of key reforms
The Government of Egypt has embarked on a major restructuring of the health sector.
This reform was deemed necessary because the MOHP and its main partners had
identified fragmentation in the delivery of health services, excessive reliance specialist
care and low primary care service quality as the main constraints to achieving universal
coverage.
The Egyptian Health Sector Reform Program (HSRP) was officially launched in 1997. The
World Bank (WB) started its contribution by designing the Master Plan for Montazah
Health District in Alexandria Governorate, in May 1998. By the following year, in 1999,
United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was the first donor to
begin field-level operations, while the European Commission (EC) joined the HSRP in
November 1999. The African Development Bank (ADB) initiated its work through
designing Master Plans for three health districts in June 2003. The most recent partner
at HSRP is the Austrian Government, which directs its participation to improving the
district hospitals as part of health district approach.
The overall aim of the HSRP is twofold. Firstly to introduce a quality basic package of
primary health care services, contribute to the establishment of a decentralised (district)
service system and improve the availability and use of health services. Secondly to
introduce institutional structural reform based on the concept of
splitting purchasing/providing and the regulatory functions of the Ministry of Health and
Population. Coverage would be provided by a National Social Insurance System. The
ultimate goal of health sector reform initiatives is to improve the health status of the
population, including reductions in infant, under-five, maternal mortality rates and
population growth rates and the burden of infectious disease.
The HSRP has meanwhile initiated a new primary care strategy in accredited facilities,
known as Family Health Units (FHU’s). Facilities are being contracted by a purchasing
agency -the Family Health Fund (FHF) - to provide services to the population. It is
envisaged that the HSRP will gradually extend its scope to the secondary level by
establishing “District Provider Organizations”. The FHF will consequently develop in the
direction of a full purchasing agency of services from the public and private sector. The
newly introduced Family Health Model (FHM) constitutes one of the cornerstones of the
reform program. It brings high quality services to the patient and will integrate most of
the vertical programs into the Basic Benefit Package of services. To date the FHM has
been introduced in over 400 health facilities, which present 10% of the total public
primary health care facilities. HSRP has an ambitious five years plan, by the end of year
2009, to cover the entire public primary health care facilities with the Family Health
Model.
The Health Sector Reform Program is made up of Egyptian experts from within the
Ministry of Health and Population, individuals across the Egyptian health care system and
international advisors.
The Egyptian Health Sector Reform Program went through several stages, including the
preparatory stage from 1994 to 1996. During this stage, several valuable studies were
conducted and used later to develop the “Strategies for Health Sector Change” study.
This was an analytical report on the Egyptian health sector. This was followed by
designing the health Master Plans stage for the five pilot governorates. Experimenting
stage of the Family Health Model took place in one of the primary health care facilities,
which took about two years to implement. This was followed by piloting stage of the
Model in five governorates and included activities such as: Building staff pattern,
designing the contents of the Basic Benefits Package and Essential Drug List, and other
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