WHEN they got married a year ago, Hassan and his wife were not ready to have children. So she began using Yasmin, a popular birth-control pill made by Bayer, a German company. But last summer, Yasmin disappeared from pharmacies. So she switched to another brand, until it also disappeared. The newly-weds were careful, but in October Hassan’s wife found out that she was pregnant. He went looking for abortion pills. But they, too, were unavailable.
The ordeal of Hassan (not his real name) and his wife is not unusual. During the past year, many Egyptians have struggled to find contraceptives, especially birth-control pills. This is symptomatic of a broader shortage of medicines that has caused widespread suffering. Access to contraception is rarely a matter of life and death—unlike, say, cancer treatment, which is also limited. But Egypt’s population is growing at 2.4% a year, much faster than most other developing countries. Water and food are in short supply. The government can hardly serve the 92m Egyptians alive today.
Egypt was once at the forefront of contraception. In ancient times women inserted a paste made with crocodile dung into their vaginas to prevent...Continue reading
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