(Photocredit: Eman El Mokadem)

Due to the increasing interest from the medical community in Cairo and Mansoura towards medical anthropology and as a result from the workshop held in June 2018 in Cairo, Dr. Mustafa Abdalla, Research Associate at the Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology, Freie Universität Berlin held a series of workshops in Cairo and Mansoura in April 2019. Together with Dr. Margret Jäger from the Sigmund Freud Privatuniversität Vienna and in cooperation with Kasr El Aini Medical School in Cairo and the Mansoura University Medical School 2 workshops were organized at each Faculty of Medicine to shed the lights on health literacy and the social determinants of health in Egypt.

Besides structural and cultural conditions, health literacy plays a central role in how individuals and groups deal with illness experience and health. In combination with education, health competency relates to the knowledge, the motivations and the competencies to find, to understand, to evaluate and to use relevant health information to deal with daily routines.

On the other hand, and in order to provide sound medical services, knowledge about social determinants of health becomes crucial for medical students and physicians in practice. Gaining this knowledge will allow medical professionals understand that there are various factors at play that guide people’s behavior in case of ailment. Dr. Abdalla, Dr. Jäger and the participants of the workshops engaged in a vibrant discussion that proved even further the relevance of the topics for the region.

Beside the Workshops that were offered and attended by faculty members and students, Dr. Mustafa Abdalla had several meetings with students and younger teaching staff who showed strong interest in Medical Anthropology. The goal of these meetings was to find ways to implement the ideas learned at the workshops and to introduce change to the Medical School environment based on an initiative developed by the attendees who attended the workshop.

See the photo gallery here