Story by Abigirl Tembo, Health Editor
ZIMBABWE and Egypt have agreed to share experiences and knowledge in public health initiatives as the two nations take their relations to the next level.
Months of negotiations between Zimbabwe and Egypt have yielded positive results with the two countries now sharing knowledge and expertise in the health sector.
A meeting between Vice President General Rtd Dr Constantino Chiwenga, who is also Zimbabwe’s Minister of Health and Child Care, and Egypt’s Minister of Health and Population in Cairo, Professor Khaled Abdel Ghaffar this Thursday, was an opportunity to seal the strategic partnership.
“We can exchange our expertise. They are going to be sending their medical professionals in the various fields to assist us in our hospitals and training and equally, we will be able to send our personnel here to get trained in the various areas. We have discussed quite a few areas where Egypt has quite advanced, and they have a lot of experience. Besides that, they are also manufacturing medical equipment which is in demand in our country and as Africa we must be able to cooperate within ourselves,” said the Vice President.
The outcome of the meeting is also pleasing with Zimbabwe and Egypt set to benefit immensely from the partnership.
“We discussed a lot of corporation issues with regards to Egypt and Zimbabwe, one of them is the exchange of experience in public health initiatives for communicable diseases and non-communicable diseases and we even went further to the extent of organ transplant so that we can share experiences in organ transplant teams in both countries. We also discussed the issue of partnerships concerning the pharmaceutical industry by exporting medications and drugs from Egypt to Zimbabwe and later, we can start encouraging the private sector and the public sector to go and do technology transfer of pharmaceutical industries in Zimbabwe. We asked our team on both sides to start communicating directly from now and report to the vice president and myself within the next few weeks so that we can start implementing what we have discussed,” said Professor Khaled Abdel Ghaffar.
Relations between Harare and Cairo have improved in recent years, and this was confirmed by the recent signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Medicines Control Authority of Zimbabwe and the Egyptian Drug Authority in the field of pharmaceutical products which has unlocked doors in the pharmaceutical sector.
