# Advancing women's health in Egypt: an economic evaluation of the presidential initiative for nationwide breast cancer early detection and treatment

Source: https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-egypt-womens-health-initiative-economics-2026/  
OnCo record `paper-egypt-womens-health-initiative-economics-2026` (Key paper). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Egypt's presidential women's health initiative, which offers free breast checks to women from age 18, found 30,225 breast cancers from 2019 to 2024, and more of them at an early stage than in Health Ministry records without the campaign.

## Summary

The Presidential Initiative for Women's Health, launched in July 2019, invites women aged 18 and over in every governorate to a risk questionnaire and, if at risk, a clinical breast examination at a primary care unit, with mammography used only as a diagnostic test after an abnormal clinical assessment, then biopsy, and free treatment through the national health insurance system or state-funded programmes for confirmed cases. This model-based economic evaluation used national programme data from July 2019 to September 2024 and compared the initiative with opportunistic detection using a decision tree and Markov model over a lifetime horizon from a societal perspective. Medical writing and publication were funded by Roche Egypt, which the authors state had no role in the study. Most authors are from the Ministry of Health and Population, including its women's health initiative, and from Egyptian cancer centres.

## Fields

- Kind: Key paper
- Last checked: 2026-11-04
- Journal: Archives of Public Health
- Year: 2026
- DOI: 10.1186/s13690-026-02122-8
- Authors: Abdelghaffar K, Hassany M, Elghazaly H, et al.
- Findings: About 23.8 million unique women generated 53,453,745 recorded screening and service encounters from July 2019 to September 2024.; Of 58,494 women referred to pathology, 44,149 were examined (24.5% did not attend), and 30,225 breast cancers were confirmed.; Stage I or II made up 61.3% of cancers found by the initiative, against 41.6% in Ministry of Health records used as the comparator.; The model estimated 32,576 extra quality-adjusted life years and total societal costs of 11.68 billion Egyptian pounds against 18.07 billion without the initiative, a net saving of 6.39 billion; the initiative was cost-effective at the Egyptian threshold of 164,588 pounds per quality-adjusted life year in all 5,000 simulations.
- What it means: Egypt chose clinical breast examination for all adult women rather than mammography for older women, because many Egyptian breast cancers occur in younger women; the programme data show a shift toward earlier stage, which is the measure such a programme is designed to move.
- Caveats: A model: survival and quality-of-life inputs were transferred from other settings, and Egyptian long-term outcome data are not yet available.; The comparison is with Ministry records of cancers found without the campaign, not a randomised control group.; Written by the programme's leaders, with publication funded by a manufacturer of breast cancer medicines.

## Sources

- Arch Public Health 2026: https://doi.org/10.1186/s13690-026-02122-8
- PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42920161/
- Full text, Europe PMC: https://europepmc.org/article/PMC/PMC13695269

## Connected records

- cancers: [Breast cancer (all types)](https://onco.cc/cancers/breast-cancer/)
- technologies: [Mammography & tomosynthesis](https://onco.cc/technologies/mammography/)
- institutions: [National Population-Based Cancer Registry Program of Egypt](https://onco.cc/institutions/egypt-national-cancer-registry-program/)

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