Starting from 2014, Egypt will only need 3,500 new physicians annually while medical schools graduate about 10,500 every year, according to the Chairman of the Medical Association.

The Secretary-General of the Medical Association, Dr Hamdi el-Sayyed, has filed a lawsuit calling for decreasing the number of students studying medicine. This has provoked many people.

The medical profession is considered to be prestigious and as having a bright future. Most parents dream of their children becoming doctors. It also seems that the Ministry of Health is keeping its mouth shut - its silence would suggest approval.Dr Hamdi recently said that, starting from 2014, the country will only need 3,500 new physicians annually while the faculties of medicine graduate about 10,500 every year. He added that he wanted every physician to apply for a new licence every five hours, based on his accredited hours of practice.He even urged Egyptian families to encourage their sons to study other specialisations like IT, management and human resources, as the dream of being a doctor is 'not the right one in the long run'.Meanwhile, educational experts have been calling for increasing the existing 18 public and 16 private universities to 50 universities, graduating 4 million students every year, instead of the current one million. They also want the public universities to be given much bigger budgets.Ali Abdel Wahed, Deputy Chairman of the Court of Appeal, believes that, although Dr Hamdi represents, by dint of his post, the majority of physicians and their demands, giving him the right to file a case, he is trying to dismantle the principle of equal opportunities. “His stand deprives students of the freedom to choose what they would like to study.” Adel Abdel Gawwad, Chairman of the Teaching Staff Authority at Cairo University, says that 50 universities are needed in the national interest, for the sake of development and to cope up with the increasing population and the consequent need for more services and skilled staff and labour.“There are about 60 universities in Tokyo, which have helped Japan become a world leader, while the number of Egyptian graduates is very low compared to the number in developed countries,” he told the Arabic-language Al- Ahram newspaper.Hamdi Abdel Azeem, former Dean of the Cairo-based Sadat Academy, says Egypt desperately needs more universities and graduates, but the problem is the cost. “Theoretical specialisations are far cheaper than practical ones, because the equipment and tools for laboratories are becoming evermore expensive,” he explains.As for Dr el-Sayyed's call, Abdel Azeem says that official figures show that the number of physicians in Egypt is very low per capita in a country of 80 million citizens. “The same applies to pharmacists and dentists.”He would like to see more private universities teaching more practical subjects, as they have the financial resources to do so. Mourad Abdel Qader, former President of Ain Shams University, a big Cairo public university with 300,000 students, admits that they find it very difficult to cover the cost of practical courses. “Public universities have small budgets and no additional resources. The practical departments should market and sell their research, but this does not happen,” he says.“As for physicians, they like to work in the big cities, not remote areas. Each physician wants to do his governmental work in the morning and run a private clinic in the evening to make lots of money.” (Editorial comment Page 4)