Physician Hassan Saad on Monday filed a legal complaint against the Egyptian education and health ministries after discovering a photo of himself – in which he is half-naked and undergoing a medical procedure – in an Egyptian primary school textbook.
Public prosecutors in the capital's Old Cairo district have officially requested explanations from both ministries as to how the photo was obtained and published without the patient's consent.
Saad first reported the incident early Monday at the Old Cairo police station, with which he lodged a legal complaint.
Claiming "psychological and moral" damage, Saad says he plans to file lawsuits against both ministries, along with the head of Cairo's Qasr Al-Aini Hospital where the medical operation was conducted.
According to Saad, he first learned of the photo – which depicts his wounded, half-naked body lying in an operation room – when his grandson pointed it out to him in his fifth-year primary school science textbook.
Saad confirmed that he underwent an operation in 2007 at Qasr Al-Aini Hospital and that the published photo was of that operation.
He described the photo as an invasion of his privacy and a violation of patients' rights, given that it was published in thousands of textbooks without his knowledge or consent.
A doctor himself, Saad went on to assert that the incident represented a breach of the medical profession's code of ethics.
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