Nurses in a hospital in Menoufia Governorate, north of Cairo, were brutally assaulted by the family of an officer in the Egyptian Air Force, before the officer later joined them, reported Arabi21.
Local media circulated a video showing brutal assault by a man (the army officer) and women (reportedly his wife) on the hospital staff, who were mostly women, in addition to other medical workers.
The incident took place in Quesna Hospital, Menoufia. A circulated footage showed that a man and women brutally assaulting a nurse who was trying to document the incident, as a woman snatched the mobile and a man slapped her and kicked her with his shoe, before another person whipped her with a whip lash.
About the details of the incident, one of the assaulted nurses said that the wife of an officer in the Egyptian Air Force, who was three-month pregnant, arrived at the hospital suffering from minor bleeding. The family of the army officer demanded that the case be dealt with as quickly as possible, threatening the medical team that they would “send them behind the sun” in case of negligence.
The nurse pointed out that although the medical staff dealt with the case as required, and called the doctor from the operations room immediately, the officer’s relatives began insulting and cursing them, before they assaulted them when the nurses tried to document what was happening by the mobile camera.
She confirmed that when the officer working in the Air Force arrived, he joined his family in beating up the nurses, and personally stepped on her face with his shoe.
Nurse Nourhan Mansour said in her testimony on the incident of the Egyptian army officer and his family assaulting medical personnel in Menoufia Governorate “The officer stepped on my face with his boots, and his mother said, ‘We’ll send you behind the sun’”.
The air force officer has been accused of violently attacking nurses at the government hospital of Quesna, being reportedly attacked six nurses and three female workers in the disturbing incident that was captured on camera and shared widely on social networking sites.
The officer and his family attacked six nurses and three other female workers, breaking their hands and legs, according to media reports. One of the nurses suffered a miscarriage after she was beaten with a rope.
According to Mada Masr, one of the nurses who was assaulted, Nourhan Mansour, said that the police twice refused to take legal action against the attackers because the officer was close to the armed forces and the hospital administration.
After one of the police officers arrived on the scene he left again after finding out that the perpetrator was part of the military.
Egypt’s Health Minister Khaled Abdel Ghaffar has ordered an urgent investigation into the assault, after it went viral on social media under the Arabic hashtag, Quesna Central Hospital.
A leaked video captured the director of the hospital threatening any employees who witnessed the crime to keep quiet.
The number of doctors and health personnel emigrating in Egypt is increasing, and the deficit in the industry is now 65 per cent. There is a 202 per cent increase in the number of doctors emigrating to Britain since 2017.
According to the Doctors Syndicate, there were more than 20 assaults on medical personnel in the first half of 2022 alone.
In August this year an attack on two Egyptian doctors underscored a rise in violence against medical workers in the country.
One of the doctors, who worked at Suez General Hospital, was attacked by the husband of a pregnant woman who disagreed with an appointment the doctor had given his wife and so fractured his arm.
Around the same time an Egyptian man stabbed a doctor in a hospital in Hilwan and then tried to stab three security guards.
In September, dozens of people stormed Mansoura International Hospital, overpowering the guards and threatening to kill doctors and nurses unless they operated on their relative.
One of the hospital workers was bludgeoned so hard he fell into a coma.
Following the attacks over the summer, undersecretary of the Human Rights Committee in parliament Abul Ela submitted a draft law to try and counter attacks on health care workers.
