Focus on psychiatry in Egypt

Focus on psychiatry in Egypt

A Okasha

DOI: 10.1192/bjp.185.3.266 Published 31 August 2004

Geriatric psychiatry

Health care systems in Egypt have largely ignored the needs of the elderly. There are only sporadic programmes to care for the elderly, mainly initiated by the community or within the private sector. Those above 65 years old represent 4.4% of Egypt’s population. The country has 34 old people’s homes for over a million elderly people, and some homes have waiting lists of over 1000 persons (Abyad et al, 2001).

An increasing number of elderly people live alone, or with elderly spouses and/or with only one or two other family members. The ‘Care With Love’ programme was established to create a sustainable, well-trained cadre of home health care providers in Egypt in order to staff units delivering such services. It was developed at the Centre for Geriatric Services in partnership with the Coptic Evangelical Organization for Social Services and As’salam Hospital in Cairo. The first training course was run in 1996, and about 500 trainees have joined the programme, taking various courses between 1996 and 2003. Ain Shams University in Cairo has started a series of courses on old age psychiatry; in addition, the Malta Institute on Ageing runs a course (in Egypt), and medical schools have started slowly to introduce lectures on ageing for undergraduates (Iskandar, 1999). Egyptian universities offer a master’s degree and doctorates in geriatrics, focusing on psychogeriatrics, which is addressed as a multidisciplinary issue.

http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/185/3/266.short