On Sunday 5 June, WHO Egypt convened, together with the Ministry of Health and Population, a meeting of the Health Development Partners’ Group (DPG). The meeting was opened and chaired by the WHO Representative for Egypt Dr John Jabbour and the Deputy Minister of Health and Population Dr Maissa Shawky.
The meeting focused on discussing government priorities in the health sector and coordinating the development of partner support to these national priorities. Government priorities were presented through the "Health Pillar of the Sustainable Development Strategy – Egypt 2030" and there were also some focused, more in-depth, discussions on 2 key topics – population and nutrition.
Discussions also highlighted some areas in which currently important gaps exist and increased development partner support is needed. Health information system and data management were raised as a key issue for the future which need coordinated effort from government and development partners.
Some of the modalities under which the Health DPG could strengthen its activities were discussed, for example, it was widely acknowledged that the Health DPG could establish smaller subgroups for focused discussions and decision-making on specific topics.
The Health DPG is part of the overall DPG framework of Egypt which coordinates development partner activities among each other and between partners and the Government. The Health DPG, together with the Transport DPG, is one of the 13 thematic DPGs with the Government (Ministry of Health and Population) as co-chair. The Health DPG thus provides a platform for high-level policy discussions aiming at setting shared principles between the Government and DPs and steering the work of development partners in the health and population sector towards the national priorities.
