10:42 AM Monday, October 30, 2023
Books – Ahmed Gomaa:
Dr. Khaled Abdel Ghaffar, Minister of Health and Population, participated in the workshop organized by the Ministry of Health and Population, coinciding with World Meningitis Day, which falls on October 5 every year.
The workshop is organized with the aim of enhancing awareness of meningitis, exchanging knowledge and the latest global recommendations for prevention, detection, diagnosis and treatment, learning about prevention and control efforts, and working to implement the roadmap adopted by the World Health Organization to eliminate meningitis by 2030.
Dr. Khaled Abdel Ghaffar, Minister of Health and Population, stressed the Ministry’s keenness to develop the skills and capabilities of personnel working in the medical sector, by holding scientific sessions to keep pace with the latest developments and global practices, which reflect positively on the health and protection of community members from diseases, pointing to the achievements made by the Egyptian state in Combating meningitis according to an effective strategy to immunize society from communicable and infectious diseases.
The Minister explained that efforts to combat meningitis and ensure a more effective response are through updating the guidelines and the surveillance strategy, noting the inclusion of the hemophilus influenza type B vaccine in the pentavalent vaccine at the age of (2 – 4 – 6) months, and maintaining the risk of infection. The coverage rate is less than 95%, with preventive measures being taken regarding any case that is detected.
Dr. Hossam Abdel Ghaffar, the official spokesman for the Ministry of Health and Population, confirmed that the minister praised the various vaccination and surveillance systems in Egypt, explaining that Egypt is one of the countries that has been able to control the disease since 1989, pointing out that the disease surveillance plan includes 12 fever hospitals, through which surveillance is carried out. Disease and sample analysis by PCR.
The official spokesman for the Ministry added that the infection rate of the disease in Egypt decreased during the year 2022 to 0.008 per 100,000 people thanks to the policy followed by the Ministry of Health and Population in combating the disease, explaining that the so-called “epidemiological threshold” or the average incidence of epidemic meningitis globally is 5 cases per 100 thousand people.
For his part, Dr. Amr Qandil, Assistant Minister of Health and Population for Preventive Medicine Affairs, said that more than 6 million doses of the bilateral meningeal vaccine have been provided annually, and school students (kindergarten, first primary, first preparatory, and first secondary) are vaccinated in addition to providing Approximately 600 thousand doses annually of the “meningeal conjugate” vaccine to vaccinate pilgrims and Umrah pilgrims.
“Kandil” pointed out that the so-called “African meningitis belt” was threatening 26 countries with a population of approximately 500 million people, and the danger was in meningitis, due to meningococcal type A, with a percentage ranging from 80 to 85% of the rest of the types of infection. Meningitis, before the provision of the meningococcal conjugate vaccine through large-scale prevention campaigns that began in 2010, and this vaccine has been included in the routine vaccination program in Egypt since 2016.
2023-10-30 08:42:00
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