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Egyptian Doctors’ Fight for Health and Social Justice: The Paradox of the Activist-Expert
Abstract
With dilapidated public hospitals, poor-quality public healthcare, widespread corruption, unaffordable private care, and inadequate healthcare coverage, the status of healthcare in Egypt gradually became a major source of social and political discontent among Egyptians. However, the most prominent voices in the fight for better health in Egypt have rarely been ordinary citizens, patients or patient advocacy groups, political parties or pressure groups, but, rather consistently, physician groups. The Egyptian uprising in January 2011, with its aspirations for "human dignity and social justice,” only lent momentum to these doctors' fight to reform the health system and enshrine the right of all Egyptians to quality healthcare. Relying on interviews with doctors and a variety of other sources, the paper focuses on the mobilization of several groups of Egyptian doctors and their efforts to reform the health system in Egypt. Some of the groups examined include the board of the Egyptian Medical Syndicate, “Doctors Without Rights,” The Committee on the Right to Health, as well as public campaigns such as “What is More Important than Egyptians’ Health?,” NGOs such as “Tahrir Doctors” and The Association for Health and Environmental Development, and charitable organizations such as “Mercy Doctors.” The paper proposes the notion of the “organic doctor,” along the lines of Gramsci’s “organic intellectual,” to examine and understand these doctors’ mobilization, not as impartial caregivers, but very often as citizens with grievances themselves who see in their fight for the interests of “the people,” a fulfillment of their socio-professional vocation and a realization of their personal and professional value systems. Relying on a historicized analysis of the role assigned to "experts" by the Egyptian state and public sphere (Mitchell, 2002), the paper highlights the paradox and limitations of the role of the “activist-expert.” Since doctors became the face of the crumbling and predatory healthcare system in Egypt, their calls for reforming it have often been met with suspicion and skepticism from their patients, and with hostility from the State which blames them for the deterioration of the healthcare system. Nonetheless, doctors’ expert and insider status often acts to legitimize their claims about the healthcare system and their appeals to reform it. The paper proposes an exploration of the moral, political and socioeconomic realities of "activist" doctors in Egypt and how they construe their mission in the face of skeptical patients and successive regimes that chose to remain deaf to their appeals.
Discipline
Political Science
Geographic Area
Egypt
Sub Area
None