Top Egyptian health officials recently triggered a public row following their remarks that give the green light for the removal of deceased persons' corneas without their families' consent. This issue has rekindled a years-old broader debate over organ donation in Egypt.

The debate stemmed from a video posted on social media July 30 by an Egyptian citizen showing his dead brother with bloody eye sockets amid allegations that Kasr al-Ainy Hospital in Cairo extracted the corneas without his family’s consent. The video went viral within a few hours, coupled with many questions simmering in Egyptians’ minds regarding the potential abuse of the sacredness of the human body — especially without the family's approval.

On July 31, the head of Kasr al-Ainy Hospital, Fathy Khodeir, further fueled the debate after telling local media that taking a dead person's corneas with the aim of saving patients who are receiving free treatment in public hospitals is in compliance with the provisions of a law issued in 2003. This law allows authorized hospitals to extract the outer surface of a deceased person's corneas without the approval of the family to treat urgent cases.

Kasr al-Ainy Hospital is affiliated with Cairo University's faculty of medicine. Both Kasr al-Ainy and Ain Shams public hospitals in Cairo have their own eye banks that are grappling with a lack of corneas due to the hefty cost of importing them from abroad.