Work is underway to revamp the Nasser Institute to be an integrated medical city. President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi had ordered the renovation of the Nasser Institute earlier this year. The institute, which was originally built in 1987 overlooking the Nile in Shubra, will be renovated at the cost of LE10 billion to increase its capacity. Renovations will include establishing new buildings for abdominal medicine, paediatrics, outpatient clinics, a genetic disease research centre and laboratory. There will also be a helipad and a river ambulance service. The institute, built over 34 feddans, will also include a conference hall and rooms for resident doctors.

In the end the institute will comprise the largest medical centre for organ transplants in Africa and the Middle East. According to Hossam Abdel-Ghaffar, the official spokesman to the Ministry of Health, the institute currently performs marrow, heart, liver, kidney, and cochlear implants. In addition, he said, they aim to perform lung transplant surgeries at the institute. Moreover, the Misr Transplant Centre, the new organ transplant centre, will include all organ transplants, according to Abdel-Ghaffar.

Abdel-Ghaffar noted that revamping the Nasser Institute will also provide for doubling the current number of beds to 1,300. It will include 80 clinics for different medical specialties, and 50 operating rooms instead of the current 22. He indicated that there will be 37 dialysis centres with a capacity of up to 137 dialysis process per day; this, in addition to increasing the number of ICU beds.

Meanwhile Mahmoud Said, the head of Nasser Institute, pointed out that last year the institute provided medical services to some 1.6 million patients. They offered complicated medical specialties, such as open-heart, tumour, and brain surgeries. Neurology, liver, marrow, and kidney transplants, and the aortic unit are all very sophisticated specialties that cannot be found anywhere in Health Ministry hospitals outside the Nasser Institute.

The oncology building inside the Nasser Institute Research and Treatment Hospital will also be expanded, in order to increase its efficiency by adding two floors in the building to accommodate 100 chemotherapy chairs, 100 internal beds for children and adults, three operating rooms, and 20 ICU beds. This, in addition to increasing the number of major operating rooms in the main building, and increasing the number of beds for hematology and bone marrow transplants to 71 beds.

“President Al-Sisi has instructed that the organ transplant and other surgery waiting list must not exceed two weeks, in order to save people’s lives and reduce mortality rates related to health issues,” Said stated.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 6 October, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.