In 1934, during the first year
of King Farouk reign, a charity organization named “healthy child organization” built a specialized hospital dedicated only for sick children — the “Abou Elrish Hospital.” This could come true due to the efforts of an eminent Egyptian pediatrician, Dr Sami Kamal. Three years later, the building was donated to the University of Cairo (known as king Fouad University at that time) to be the first University Children’s Hospital. Dr Ibraheem Shawky Bek, a pediatrician and head of the hospital, allocated four beds, for the first time, to the surgical patients. In the beginning, a house officer carried the duties of the surgical registrar. Two years later, Dr Sebaay Alzenfaly was assigned the first registrar job in the pediatric surgery unit followed by Dr Aly Ibraheem (later Aly Pasha Ibraheem) a pioneer of modern surgery in Egypt. The unit remained under the supervision of pediatricians until 1961, when control came finally to a pediatric surgeon. The credit goes to Prof Dr Ismail Mehrez, Professor of General Surgery, who decided that the unit should be supervised by a pediatric surgeon. As the time went by, Abou Elrish Children’s Hospital turned to be perhaps the largest and most famous children’s hospital in the Middle East and Africa. The old Abou Elrish Children’s Hospital (1937–1991) has been replaced by two newer children’s hospitals. The first is Cairo University Specialized Pediatric Hospital, which was established in July 1983 with the financial help of the Japanese government. It includes 176 beds, five operating rooms (OR), and two neonatal and pediatric intensive care units (NICU, PICU), in addition to a large outpatient clinic for all pediatric sub-specialties. The second and more recent hospital is the Moniera Children’s Hospital, which is even larger (320 beds and 32 incubators at the NICU). Both hospitals are part of the Cairo University Hospitals and are level 3, tertiary referral pediatric surgical centers.
