This week, Egyptian social media was consumed by the testimony of Omnia Sweidan, a former resident physician in obstetrics and gynecology at Alexandria’s El-Shatby University Hospital, who described what she characterizes as years of abuse (including sexual abuse), humiliation and neglect inside the facility, one of Egypt’s largest maternity hospitals. In a Facebook post that quickly went viral, Sweidan recounted incidents she claimed to have witnessed during her residency, including the sexual assault of a woman in labor under the guise of a medical examination, the physical abuse of patients during childbirth, the refusal of care to an alleged rape victim and medical decisions shaped by social stigma rather than patient welfare. “I wish that anyone with even a shred of conscience would open an investigation into El-Shatby Hospital,” she wrote. “It is a place that caused psychological trauma to 90% of the people who entered it.”
On Tuesday, security forces arrested her at her home in Damanhour. According to reports, prosecutors later released her on bail of 20,000 Egyptian pounds, while accusing her of spreading false news and misusing social media. If convicted, she could face prison time. Sweidan’s Facebook account appears to have since been removed.
The allegations struck a nerve because they touched on the taboo subject of obstetric violence, the term for physical, verbal or emotional abuse and mistreatment during pregnancy, childbirth or postpartum recovery. The subject may not always be discussed in the public sphere, but it has been talked about privately for years, as new testimony is revealing. In a 2022 New Lines essay, Bahira Amin documented complaints from Egyptian mothers about medical procedures performed without consent, violations of privacy and the routine dismissal of women’s pain during pregnancy and childbirth. Women told her they felt “violated” and that the experience left them feeling as if they had been “tortured.” Sweidan’s testimony has included similar complaints and made another taboo subject — sexual assault — difficult to ignore.
Despite attempts at discrediting her, including suggestions that she was mentally unstable, Sweidan is not alone. The Egyptian fact-checking platform Matsda2sh (Don’t Believe It) subsequently released a report including interviews with five former El-Shatby doctors who worked at the hospital between 2017 and 2023. While none independently verified every allegation, they described a workplace culture that they said normalized verbal abuse, humiliation and neglect. Several recounted witnessing women being insulted or slapped during labor, subjected to painful examinations and denied dignity at some of the most vulnerable moments of their lives.
The accounts echo years of research into maternal care in Egypt. Farida Mahmoud, a physician and researcher specializing in women’s health, posted a video arguing that traumatic treatment during childbirth is not an isolated phenomenon. In research conducted at Cairo University’s Kasr Al-Ainy Hospital, she found that more than 90% of mothers surveyed reported experiencing at least one form of “disrespect” or “abusive treatment” during childbirth. Mahmoud linked such experiences to high rates of postpartum depression and long-lasting psychological trauma, noting that many women remember these incidents decades later. Reflecting on his own experience, former physician Mourad Aly wrote that regardless of the specifics of Sweidan’s allegations, “no one denies the miserable state of medical services in Egypt,” describing a system under sustained strain that affects both patients and medical staff.
Meanwhile, figures like Tarek Toppozada, an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Alexandria University, whose grandfather was one of the first to teach at the School of Gynecology and Obstetrics a century ago, pushed back against what he described as an incomplete portrayal of El-Shatby circulating online. In a Facebook post, he argued that while large public hospitals may face strain, it is “unfair to reduce a long history of medical care and training to a partial or distorted image.”
In a formal statement, the Egyptian Medical Syndicate emphasized that no complaints have yet been submitted and warned against generalizing about Egypt’s doctors, the overwhelming majority of whom, the syndicate said, work under extraordinary pressure in an overstretched healthcare system. Alexandria University has said the allegations are under investigation. For now, the claims remain unresolved and, as with many of the country’s social and political issues, stuck in a purgatory of legal proceedings. Whether the widening public conversation about what takes place inside Egypt’s maternity wards has any bearing on future conditions of care, especially in a country that continues to have among the Arab world’s highest birth rates, remains to be seen.