A hospital truly fit for purpose

The hospital is the heart of EgyptAir Medical Services Company and at its helm is its chairman, Abdel Salam Hassan Helmy.

“When it was first established there were just 12 beds in the intensive care unit and now there are 47,” said Helmy. “The hospital capacity is 202 beds and it has ten private suites. It has state-of the-art facilities for cardiac artery catheterisation, kidney dialysis and endoscopy procedures, as well as units for open-heart-surgery, liver transplants, spinal cord surgery and other specialised operations. It has comprehensive medical, surgical and diagnostic facilities including laboratories, radio-diagnosis and nuclear medicine units, nephrology, neonatal units, operating theatres and dental clinics. And, to extend our expertise and link to the world, we have recently merged with Georges Pompidou hospital in Paris .”

All EgyptAir staff benefit from the hospital with full medicals every three months.

“We serve pilots, cabin staff, engineers and airport staff to full medicals which includes blood investigations,” said Helmy.

The hospital, which treats around 87 patients a day, is specifically known for its expertise in heart and liver operations.

It has performed 201 successful major open-heart surgeries and, since 2007, 48 liver transplant surgeries with a 91 per cent success rate.

The hospital, which has 200 doctors, offers 24-hour emergency room services, has seven pharmacies as well as tailored therapeutic tourism programmes for visitors.

An air ambulance serves the tourist destinations around the country and the hospital’s preventative medicine section works in close cooperation with EgyptAir to monitor the hygiene standards of the aircraft and food catering services.

Cairo International Airport is around ten minutes from the hospital. It has its own medical clinics there for emergencies.

Helmy explained: “We have four clinics at the airport. Any emergencies are then transferred by one of our four ambulances to the hospital. This includes any flight emergencies either with staff or passengers. Cabin crew can contact our call centre at the hospital and describe the medical situation. Staff then advise over the phone and we have an ambulance waiting for the flight.”

Helmy has been chairman for only a year but has already earned the nickname in the country’s media as ‘The Bulldozer’ due to the amount of work he has already done with great speed. In his first year he has bought medical equipment for 9 million Egyptian Pounds.

“We are currently looking to improve this hospital with a five-year plan,” he explained. We continue to improve, from the infrastructure of the building to the development of our medical equipment like X-ray machines, MRI, and CT scans. We also have the most advanced machines to test blood, viruses, bacteria and immunity, upon which we continue to improve.

“We are also upgrading the emergency room and equipping it with two minor operating theatres and five-bed ICU, establishing a minimal invasive therapy unit for treatment of backache without surgical intervention, opening a cardiac critical care centre and emergency cerebral stroke centre.

“Hospital beds and surgical trolleys are currently being renewed and we are expecting to be equipped with 34 new high performing smart bed systems for ICU. Also, a specialised outpatient clinic complex has been launched in Cairo Airport to serve workers in the field of civil aviation. We will be opening a new building to include 22 outpatient clinics in various specialties to serve a larger number of patients.”

Medical tourism is also being improved along with therapeutic programmes in collaboration with Karnak Travel and duty-free office. The assigning of packages of different prices and levels to attract a different category of patients to medical tourism is also planned.