The Minister of Health and Population Adel al-Adawy stressed in a meeting Tuesday with members of the National Committee for Combating Viral Hepatitis the need to expand treatment so as to include people suffering from the early stages of the disease, to facilitate means of getting needed drugs, and to increase the number of medical clinics.
Adawy aded In a statement Wednesday that the ministry has begun to negotiate with the companies producing new drugs that treat hepatitis so as to produce the latest and most effective drugs without increasing its prices.
Wahid Doss, dean of the National Institute for Liver and Chairman of the National Committee to Combat Viral Hepatitis, said that the Solvadi drug would be available by the end of November in 16 medical centers nationwide.
The National Committee has 66,000 doses of the US drug Solvadi sufficient to treat 20,000 patients as a first stage, Doss said.
Hundreds of patients with the hepatitis virus flocked to public and private hospitals and medical centers in Gharbia Governorate to receive the drug after Adawy issued a decision that all patients could be treated at the expense of the state.
