Healthcare in Egypt: A Path to Reform and Sustainability
As Egypt expands its Universal Health Insurance System to cover all citizens by 2030, addressing gaps in access, affordability and quality of care has become crucial.
To tackle these issues head-on, a group of AUC faculty and researchers — in collaboration with other academics, the London School of Economics and Egypt's Ministry of Health — is working toward a comprehensive reform. The project is part of the Partnership for Health System Sustainability and Resilience (PHSSR), an international collaboration between academia, governments and the private sector to bolster healthcare systems throughout the world. Egypt is the first African country to join this global initiative.
“By using advanced data and innovative payment models, we can create a system that not only improves healthcare outcomes but also makes it more affordable and equitable for all, especially the most vulnerable populations.”
Led by Hesham Dinana, assistant professor in AUC’s Department of Journalism and Mass Communication and the project’s principal investigator, the AUC team mapped out the strengths and weaknesses in Egypt’s healthcare system in a 2024 report, assessing healthcare in Egypt and providing evidence-based recommendations for strengthening the system across seven critical domains: governance, financing, workforce, medicines and technology, service delivery, population health and environmental sustainability.
“This project aims to create lasting solutions that improve access, early detection and overall care for all Egyptians,” Dinana said. “So many studies end up with recommendations that never go into action, and that’s something I wanted to avoid from the beginning.”
Building on their findings within the report, Dinana and his team are now working on two key initiatives that will be implemented in Egypt’s healthcare reform: creating a centralized health data platform to improve decision making and resource allocation, and establishing a fair financing system that matches healthcare spending with the most common health issues and uses new payment methods to keep costs manageable and sustainable.
“These efforts will help ensure that resources are distributed where they are needed most,” Dinana explained. “By using advanced data and innovative payment models, we can create a system that not only improves healthcare outcomes but also makes it more affordable and equitable for all, especially the most vulnerable populations.”
Dinana and the research team are now working with the government and corporate sponsors to launch educational and advocacy programs this fall that will support the implementation of the initiatives.
“This project aims to create lasting solutions that improve access, early detection and overall care for all Egyptians."
Alongside Dinana, Mohamed Salama, professor and graduate program director at AUC’s Institute of Global Health and Human Ecology (IGHHE) and Fayrouz Sakr-Ashour, assistant professor at IGHHE, are serving on the project’s advisory board. The report's AUC-affiliated co-authors include Basma Saleh (MPH ’23), Hebatalla Ismail (MPH ’24), Eman Abu Aly (MPH ’25), and Marwa Hafiz (MPH ’25), who is also the project’s coordinator. Non-AUC researchers include Fatma MA Barakat from the American University of Beirut and Ranin Soliman from the University of Oxford.
"This partnership demonstrates that we are trusted to produce world-class solutions.”
“From the beginning, we were keen to involve AUC graduate students,” Dinana said. “The strength of their academic achievements, combined with their professional experience and diverse backgrounds, provided a solid foundation for building a highly successful research team."
As the team moves forward, they are committed to leveraging AUC’s multidisciplinary strengths to address the challenges facing healthcare in Egypt.
“We as a team believe that focusing on healthcare and education as Egypt's top priorities is crucial right now,” Dinana said. “Healthcare is not just a medical field; it intersects with finance, economics, communications and engineering. It requires a diverse set of skills, many of which we have here at AUC. This partnership demonstrates that we are trusted to produce world-class solutions.”
The AUC team mapped out the strengths and weaknesses in Egypt’s healthcare system in a 2024 report
