CAIRO (MEMO) – The Egyptian Medical Syndicate has revealed the resignation of 4,621 doctors over the past year due to low wages and poor working conditions, an issue that has sparked widespread controversy in Egypt.
MP Sahar al-Bazar, head of the Foreign Relations Committee in the Egyptian Parliament, requested a briefing on the doctors’ resignations.
Al-Bazar explained in the briefing request that in 2016, doctors submitted about 1,044 resignations; in 2017, the number of those who resigned reached 2,549, and in 2018, 2,612 doctors resigned.
She continued that in 2019, the number reached 3,507; in 2020, 2,986 doctors resigned; and in 2021, 4,127 submitted their resignations.
The Egyptian Center for the Right to Medicine warned of the continuation of the phenomenon of doctors working in the Ministry of Health hospitals emigrating.
It called for the need to discuss the phenomenon that intensified five years ago. According to the Medical Syndicate, the number of doctors who resigned reached 4,261 in 2022, more than those who resigned in 2021, estimated at 4,127 doctors. The number of doctors registered with the General Syndicate is currently 230,000, including public, university, teaching or private hospitals.
The centre indicated that doctors’ resignations from government jobs are due to various reasons, including doctors’ economic situations and the loss of their rights amid difficult work relations.
It noted that 11,000 doctors emigrated abroad in the last five years for the same reasons, which pose a serious threat to health rights, as doctors are the backbone of achieving the right to health. The global average is 22 doctors for every 10,000 people, while there are only nine doctors for every 10,000 people in Egypt.
The center stressed that the reason for doctors’ resignations is poor wages, which forces doctors to work in more than one hospital or look for an opportunity to travel, a significant shortage of hospital facilities in terms of medicines and medical supplies, a shortage of ICU beds, as well as incubators, dialysis machines and the lack of training programs that promote learning and knowledge of developments in medicine. There is also a lack of medical liability laws protecting doctors in cases of medical negligence, which does not give them professional security.