Khaled Abdel Ghaffar, Egypt’s Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research and Acting Minister of Health and Population, met with Belgian Ambassador to Egypt, François Cornet, on Tuesday to discuss strengthening means of cooperation between Egypt and Sweden in the health sector.
During the meeting, Abdel Ghaffar thanked the State of Belgium for supporting Egypt with more than one million doses of coronavirus vaccines, which arrived over the past months through COVAX, noting that Belgium is one of the first countries that supported Egypt with vaccines during the response to the pandemic.
The meeting also discussed enhancing aspects of cooperation between Egypt and Belgium in the health sector, especially in the areas of transferring and localising modern medical technology industries and bio-products as well as developing the capabilities of workers in the fields of health care and health digitisation, according to a statement from the ministry on Tuesday.
Furthermore, Abdel Ghaffar reviewed the Egyptian state’s strategy in confronting the COVID-19 pandemic and the measures to address the virus’s variants and provide all types of vaccines.
He also went over the expanded vaccination campaigns being carried out in Egypt to reach all target groups and facilitate their access to receiving the vaccine.
Additionally, the two sides agreed on the importance of cooperation between Egyptian and Belgian universities in the fields of providing programmes and scholarships for university students in a way that contributes to the exchange of scientific and cultural experiences between academics in both countries.
For his part, Cornet expressed his country’s aspiration to benefit from Egypt’s leading experience in implementing public health initiatives like the ‘100 Million Health Initiative’, as part of a cooperation plan to share and exchange experiences between the two countries, stressing his country’s keenness to support Egypt in facing the COVID-19 pandemic.
