25 November 2022 — After a series of preparatory meetings over the past few months, a high-level workshop on the national guideline development and adaptation program was held in Cairo on 22-23 November 2022, hosted by the WHO Country Office of Egypt, in close collaboration with the Evidence and Data to Policy Unit of the WHO Regional Office's Department of Science, Information and Dissemination.
Participants included senior officials from the Ministry of Health and Population and its affiliated bodies, especially the General Organization For Teaching Hospitals and Institutes (GOTHI) which has been assigned the role of establishing a national guideline program by the Ministry of Health, as well as representatives of Ministry of Interior, Egyptian Healthcare Authority, General Authority for Healthcare Accreditation and Regulation (GAHAR), Nursing syndicate, Ministry of Defense, Healthcare and Nursing Sector at the General Office of Ministry of Health, Central Administration of Critical Care of Ministry of Health, Nursing training department, Department of Emergency & Critical Care, academic institutions, and specialty societies for various medical specialties such as, Ophthalmology, Gastroenterology, Hepatology, & Infectious Diseases, Cardiology, Neurology, Pediatrics & Neonatology and more.
Dr. Mohamed Fawzy (President of GOTHI), Dr Naeema Al-Gasseer (WHO Representative in Egypt), Dr Arash Rashidian (Director of the Science, Information, and Dissemination Department, WHO EMRO), Dr Nathan Ford (Chair of WHO’s Guidelines Review Committee), Dr Mehrnaz Kheirandish (Regional Advisor, EDP, SID, WHO EMRO), and Dr Riham El-Asady (Consultant, WHO Egypt) were some of the key experts in attendance at this high-level workshop.
The aim of this workshop was to bring together a group of national policy-makers and experts to review and discuss the country experience in the development, adoption, and adaptation of guidelines, including challenges and actual implementation of guidelines in practice; and agree on the main action points for establishing the national program for development and adaptation of guidelines in Egypt.
A total of 13 sessions were held at the high-level workshop. The sessions included both theoretical, as well as practical sessions on the development and adaptation of evidence-based clinical practice and public health guidelines. Key actions were also discussed and planned for the future including a one-week technical workshop to be held early next year, in February 2023.