CAIRO — In a rare escalation of events, a police assault on doctors in Cairo’s Matariya hospital in early February provoked the Egyptian Medical Syndicate into holding an emergency general assembly on Feb. 12, which resolved to offer free medical services and close all outpatient clinics in all public hospitals across the nation. The doctors’ union also demanded the referral of Health Minister Dr. Ahmad Imad to the syndicate’s disciplinary committee before revoking his license following a statement in which he claimed that a large number of physicians are not fit for medical practice.

In an interview with Al-Monitor, Dr. Ehab Taher, the syndicate's secretary, said, “The emergency general assembly faced many difficulties to even hold its meeting after many hotels and other venues refused to host the general assembly. This left us with the only option of holding it at the syndicate’s small building on Cairo’s Qasr al-Ayni street.”

Taher added, “The syndicate was able to manage the smallness of the place by dividing the seats assigned to the general assembly’s doctors and their supporters from other independent syndicates into 14 areas, and connecting them via a videoconferencing network that included the main conference hall and the syndicate’s council hall, as well as the streets and gardens annexed to the building. Other participants were provided with a seatless standing area outside the building.”

Taher also said that the syndicate adopted a number of security measures and assigned some of the syndicate’s members tasks such as examining every banner before entering the building and rejecting political and offensive ones, checking doctors’ membership cards and inspecting bags. The syndicate also hired a trained camera team to record what happened in the event of any potential clashes or complications.