Will a Military Minister Amid Egyptian Health Ministry Bribe Scandal?

Egypt's Ministry of Health has been living in an incident of a "major corruption crisis" that has been shaking its pillars since last week.

A country's regulatory body discovered the involvement of some senior officials close to Health Minister Hala Zayed in cases that the public prosecutor's office said were "investigating."

While leaks from within the ministry continue to concern the number of arrested people and the nature of the charges against them in these cases related to "corruption and bribery", Egyptian Prime Minister Mustafa Madbouli decided to assign Minister of Higher Education Khaled Abdel Ghaffar the duties of Minister Hala Zayed.

Meanwhile, PM Madbouli agreed to Zayed’s "sick leave" request, the latter being hospitalized days after she suffered a medical condition, and performed a diagnostic catheter, coinciding with the outbreak of the case.

 

Bribes

According to informed sources inside the ministry who spoke to the Independent Arabic newspaper, and asked not to be identified, "the story began last week, when members of the administrative oversight body raided the ministry building, to investigate and arrest senior officials, in the presence of the minister in her office."

Hala Zayed was surprised by "the magnitude of the accusations and evidence of the involvement of the officials, and was subsequently in a medical condition, and was later taken to the Nile Valley Hospital of the Egyptian General Intelligence Service in central Cairo," the sources said.

While the sources expected that the investigations would affect other leaders in the ministry and abroad, they said that among the most prominent arrested were "the director of the Technical Office for Political Communication, other leaders in the department of free treatment (concerned with issuing licenses for health facilities in Egypt), and others," explaining that the charges relate mainly to "receiving bribes and financial misappropriations."

"I believe that the magnitude of the cases uncovered by the regulatory body within the ministry, which was not born last week, hastened the removal of the Minister of Health and her gradual removal from the scene, especially since there are suspicions of the involvement of other people outside the ministry who may be close to Minister Zayed," one source told The Independent Arabic.

As the investigation continued, an informed source said that the director of the Department of Political Communication and four directors of the Department of Free Treatment are accused of receiving a bribe of 2 million pounds, out of the amount of 35 million pounds.

The minister has been investigated so far three times, with her ex-husband and the father of her children.

The source pointed out that the bribe was "from two health insurance companies that applied for licenses and direct order supplies". The source suggested that the minister had "resigned or been asked to retire at home until a cabinet reshuffle."

"The thinking now within the government is that the minister should be released without embarrassing her or the state," an informed government source said, stressing that this will not happen until the investigations are completed, and that Zayed will be removed clean and not involved in anything. The source noted that the Minister could resign as a safe exit.

 

A Military Minister?

A few days after Zayed's resignation, rumors emerged that Major General Dr. Atef Imam had taken over the Ministry of Health.

No official body came out to deny or prove the news, and after contacting the general who is currently in the United States of America to attend a scientific conference, he confirmed that he was not contacted to take over the portfolio of the Ministry of Health.

“But many, especially the sons of the ministry, welcomed the arrival of a minister from a military background, to restore the "discipline" of the ministry,” according to the major general.

"It is an honor for any human being to serve his country in any location, and some have echoed his name for this position as a result of the experiences he has had and has assumed many tasks and responsibilities over the past years," he said.

Imam has previously held several positions, including director of the Armed Forces Hospital in Al-Helmiya, then chairman of the General Military Medical Council, and has served as consultant and head of the plastic and burns departments of the armed forces.

He is currently professor of plastic surgery and burns at the Military Academy, Secretary General of the Egyptian Society of Plastic Surgeons, Chairman and Managing Director of the Egyptian Railway Medical Center Company.

The idea of appointing a military brigade to lead health comes in the context of militarizing Egypt's health sector and treating it as a matter of national security.

Sisi's vision had implications for the reality of doctors, nurses and pharmacists, whom Sisi's regime treated as soldiers in the regular army.

 

Militarization of the Corona File

Al-Estiklal newspaper interviewed a number of medical workers in Egypt and agreed that the Egyptian regime deals with doctors and medical staff in Egypt as well as soldiers conscripted into the army.

At the beginning of the Corona pandemic, the government summoned Dr. Bahaa al-Sayed to work at the May 15 quarantine hospital in Cairo, we reached out to Bahaa and told us: "Before I went to the hospital I asked an army dean about the nature of my assignment at the quarantine hospital, and the army dean warned me that if I responded to the summons, I would only be discharged from the hospital by military order.”

“Moreover, he told me that if I tried to get out before that, the army officer had orders to "liquidate me and shoot me" if I tried to escape. They treat us like a border fugitive," he added to Al-Estiklal.

Noha Abdullah also told us that in many cases with Corona symptoms, the system refused to perform a PCR analysis, even if the patient was a doctor or nurse.

There was no official statement explaining the reasons for refusing to conduct the PCR analysis on the medical staff.

However, the testimony of doctors, pharmacists and nurses questioned by Al-Estiklal is frequent about an implicit agreement between all hospital managers and officials to cover up cases as much as possible, not to “cause panic” within the citizens.

"This behavior is consistent with the nature of the security and military logic that the military authority in Egypt usually deals with the people," a medical source told Al-Estiklal.

Egyptian doctor Alaa Shaaban Hamida, who gathered widespread solidarity for her continued detention from March 2020 to October 2020, was arrested from her workplace at Alexandria University's Al-Shatabi Hospital for using her phone to report a suspected case of coronavirus, and the hospital director reported her for what he described as his transgression of his terms of reference.

Online activity was also banned, with the AMNESTY international stating that Egyptian security had suspended eight health workers due to comments in the media about health conditions following the Corona outbreak.

The organization also called on the Egyptian authorities to stop "intimidating" health workers in the context of the Corona crisis, adding that Egyptian authorities had charged the detainees with broad  terrorism-related charges and spreading false news.