More than 30 million Egyptians have been screened for hepatitis C and a number of chronic diseases as part of the state’s “100 Million Lives” campaign launched last October, the health ministry said on Friday.

In press statements, Minister of Health Hala Zayed said a total of 6,999,000 citizens had been screened for the virus as of Friday in Cairo alone, out of a total of 7,760,000 targeted for screening in the capital.

Around 17,250,000 people were screened in the governorates of Cairo, Suez, Kafr El-Sheikh, Menoufiya, Ismailia, Beni Suef, Aswan, Sohag, the Red Sea and North Sinai, representing an average of 81 percent of the targeted population, in the campaign’s second phase which launched on 30 November.

More than 13 million Egyptians where screened in the first phase of the campaign which kicked off in October.

The third phase, which includes the governorates of New Valley, Giza, Gharbiya, Daqahliya, Sharqiya, Minya, and Qena, will begin in March.

The number of those screened during both the first and the second phases totals 30.3 million out of the country's 104 million population, making it the country's largest ever anti-hepatitis C campaign.

As of 2015, some 22 percent of Egypt's population had hepatitis C.

Over the past three years, Egypt has been using a variety of new medications to combat the virus.

In 2016, the health ministry announced it had achieved a 96 percent cure rate of the disease nationwide.

The health ministry has vowed to completely eliminate the disease from Egypt by 2022.