Mahmoud Qassem, a member of the Legislative Committee in the House of Representatives, called on the government to “intervene quickly to save the financial situation of Hospital 57357 upon calls from a number of social media figures to rescue the hospital from complete shutdown.
Unfortunately this is due to the lack of funding and donations.
A number of public figures including actor Amr Youssef, and Zamalek football player Shikabala who raised a shirt that read “Save Hospital 57357”, called for the rescue of the children’s cancer hospital.
Qassem said he submitted a briefing request that he submitted to Hanafi Gebaly, Speaker of the House of Representatives, addressed to Mustafa Madbouly, Prime Minister, Mohamed Maait, Minister of Finance, Khaled Abdel Ghaffar, Minister of Health and Population, and other ministers on Wednesday, over the matter.
Qassem added the hospital’s main crisis lies in the lack of donations and funding.
There has been dire repercissions as a result.
The cost of treatment and services has increased recently making it difficult to obtain such services and medicine.
Qassem said that donations decreased during the last six months by 80 percent to 88 percent compared to the same period in previous years.
This has pushed the hospital to release its last bank deposit to cover treating 18,000 children with cancer, for only one year.
This is a precautionary measure just in case no new donations are sourced.
“The decline in donations coincided with the crisis of the rise in the exchange rate of the dollar, which caused a rise in treatment costs about three folds,” he added, pointing out that “the hospital administration made a decision recently to limit follow-up to children recovering from cancer until the age of 22, instead of 25 years old, as usual, according to the medical protocol in force since the establishment of the hospital.
A child with cancer was treated for three years in the hospital, and was medically followed up until the age of 25.
Hospital 57357 is currently following up the cases of 18,000 children with cancer, and will not be able to receive any case from the waiting list, which amounts to 17,500 cases diagnosed with cancer, Qassem said.
Qassem confirmed that the hospital is now informing new patients to go to other hospitals, such as the Oncology Institute, the Abu al-Rish Japanese Hospital, or the Nasser Institute.
According to Qassem, the hospital’s branch in Tanta has been shut down a few months ago due to lack of funding, and announced handing over the hospital branch in Tanta, to be managed and operated by Tanta University.
Qassem called on the government to expedite the provision of financial resources for the hospital, whether from grants that reach the Ministry of International Cooperation or from any financial sources with the government, appealing to businessmen and citizens to quickly donate to the hospital, which provides medical services at the highest level for children with cancer across Egypt.
The hospital offers via this link many donation channels, such as bank accounts, sending a message of LE5, Vodafone Cash, or e-payment companies.
Click here to donate.
