The Ministry of Health and Population has confirmed that the services provided by the President’s Initiative to End Waiting Lists are entirely free of charge, with patients bearing no financial burden. The initiative aims to alleviate the suffering of those unable to afford treatment, offering urgent and critical surgeries of the highest quality in the fastest possible time.
Dr. Ahmed Mustafa, the Health Ministry’s Advisor for the Initiative to End Waiting Lists and Head of the Health Insurance Authority, highlighted the ministry’s commitment to improving hospital performance and delivering the best possible medical services to patients. This is achieved through continuous training for medical staff and equipping hospitals with the latest necessary surgical equipment, alongside ongoing development of the automated system used for the initiative to ease data tracking and extraction.
Dr. Ahmed Mustafa noted that since the initiative’s launch, it has activated a unified electronic system linking the entities issuing treatment decisions, whether through state-funded care or health insurance, based on each hospital's capacity. The system also allows for the transfer of cases between service-providing sectors.
Dr. Mustafa urged patients in need of surgical interventions covered by the initiative to register on the dedicated website for monitoring the cases of the End Waiting Lists Initiative, and mentioned that inquiries and data could also be received via the hotline 15300.
He further stated that the initiative has completed 2,700,736 surgeries as of now, as part of efforts to clear waiting lists and prevent the accumulation of new ones for critical surgical interventions since its launch in July 2018.
Since the beginning of the initiative, the ministry has received 260,033 calls from waiting list patients through the dedicated hotline, with 220,452 cases monitored from July 2023 to February 2025.
Dr. Mustafa clarified that the initiative covers surgeries for heart conditions, orthopedics, ophthalmology, oncology, brain catheters, heart catheterization, neurology, kidney transplants, liver transplants, cochlear implants, and peripheral catheters. Patients are centrally assigned to hospitals within the initiative to ensure the fastest possible medical service.
Dr. Hossam Abdel Ghaffar, the official spokesperson for the Ministry of Health and Population, explained that the initiative, launched by President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, aimed to resolve a chronic problem in the Egyptian healthcare system: the long wait times before surgeries. The initiative began in July 2018.
He noted that before July 2018, waiting times for treatments like heart diseases, orthopedics, ophthalmology, oncology, brain and heart catheterizations, neurology, kidney and liver transplants, and cochlear implants ranged from one year to 18 months. The President's initiative has been a major step in reducing unnecessary waiting times before surgeries.
Dr. Abdel Ghaffar further emphasized that today, the average waiting time is no more than two to three weeks, and all services provided are free of charge, funded through the state's general budget or donations from organizations such as civil society groups, the Banks Union, and the Tahya Misr Fund, which has made significant contributions to the funding of these interventions.
Source: Egypt Today
