File photo: Hundreds of doctors waiting to enter the Doctors' Syndicate to attend an urgent general assembly meeting on Friday, 12 February 2016 (Mai Shaheen)
Egypt’s Doctors Syndicate postponed on Thursday its general assembly meeting to 8 April after the venue, Qasr El-Aini Hospital, sent them a “sudden formal apology stating they can’t hold the event for maintenance reasons,” a syndicate statement read.
The statement explained that the syndicate reserved and fully paid for a conference room in Downtown Cairo’s Qasr El-Aini Hospital for a general assembly meeting on 25 March.
However, the hospital said 24 hours prior to the meeting that they could no longer hold the event for “maintenance reasons.”
In order for the syndicate to hold a meeting at a certain place they have to notify their members two weeks in advance. Thus, the syndicate couldn’t proceed with holding the meeting somewhere else.
The general assembly was regarded as a follow-up to a previous assembly meeting on 12 February, where members voted to refer the health minister to a disciplinary committee, demanding that he be fired from the syndicate.
A record number of doctors attended the February assembly, held in the syndicate headquarters in on Qasr Al-Aini Street in Downtown Cairo, with the road seen overflowing with members lined to enter the meeting.
During the meeting, the members voted on a number of strike measures to protest against police assaults on doctors.
The minister still holds his post despite a limited cabinet reshuffle that took place on Wednesday though a syndicate disciplinary committee is currently investigating him.
Egypt has only one Doctors Syndicate and in order to be practice medicine in the country, doctors must be members.
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