Egyptian Chronicles: Highlighted comments for important topics

From time to time I receive very valuable comments from valuable readers about topics I posted from quite some time that should be highlighted.

I received this weekend very valuable comments I want to share with you regarding two important posts

The first comment was regarding The “The language of numbers : Drug addiction and use in Egypt” , this comment is from Dr.Mohammed El-Hendawi , specialist in substance abuse and drug addiction treatment, he is currently working for the Heliopolis Psychiatric Hospital AKA airport (El-Matar)hospital, the leading institute of drug addiction medicine in Egypt, and the regional center of UNODC,he is also the head of the information center of the hospital , which means he has access to all information regarding the drug addiction and use in Egypt.

Here is the comment :

hello, nice blog and topic, i am a doctor who works in the field of substance abuse and drug addiction treatment, I work for the Heliopolis Psychiatric Hospital AKA airport (El-Matar)hospital, the leading institute of drug addiction medicine in Egypt, and the regional center of Treatnet group, UNODC, i am also the head of the information center of the hospital, anyway, I am not making any advertisement for the governmental hospital I work for, we don't need it actually, just mentioned that to ensure the reliability of the information I want to say, the number of 20000 addicts in Egypt is ridiculous, non-realistic and makes me laugh, as in the year 2007, our hospital alone delivered services for almost 24000 patients in the outpatient clinics! the real number of drug addicts (addicts not users) in Egypt is unknown for sure, but professionally it is estimated to be somewhere between 5-6 MILLION addicts, SAD BUT TRUE, these estimations are made by the National Centre for Social and Criminological Research (NCSCR), and the National Council for Fighting and Treating Addiction (NCFTA), both are governmental and specialized facilities.
Addiction is a real serious national problem that is going disastrous and huge.
anyway, thanks for the very nice blog, and topic, and for anyone who is interested in details about drug addiction and its treatment in Egypt, please feel free to email me at melhendawi@gmail.com

The Second I received was regarding the A to Zinc medicine, if you remember I was wondering once upon time if it is halal or not , that if that medicine got an ingredients from Pork

I received this comment from Mr. Syed Shah from UK in another different post

Here is comment

This is the email I received from Centrum UK thought share with everybody
Dear Mr Shah
Thank you for your recent enquiry regarding Centrum Tablets.
Several of the vitamins used in the Centrum formulations do contain gelatin, which is derived from Bovine (cattle) and Porcine (pigs)
Thank you for contacting the Wyeth Consumer Healthcare Careline.
Yours sincerely
Holly Lewis

This is from Wyeth Consumer Health Careline , Wyeth is the producer of Centrum , to tell you the truth I am confused as I asked the doctors in Egypt and they told me that there is nothing in it and it is ok to take it . All the debate is about the Gelatin , we do not know actually if it is 100% Bovine or 100 Porcine.

Seriously any doctor in the house can tell us about this !!

A to Zinc in the doctors’ favourite multi vitamins in Egypt