Last Updated, Thursday, 1:21 p.m. With angry protesters challenging the Egyptian government’s grip on strategic cities of the Suez Canal, the army chief warning of the potential “collapse of the state,” violent sexual assault plaguing demonstrations in Tahrir Square and more than 50 deaths in the latest round of street clashes, the nation’s prime minister spoke this week on state television about a social problem that few people saw coming: unclean breasts.
In rambling remarks broadcast on the state broadcaster Nile TV, Prime Minister Hisham Qandil turned his attention to the problem of diarrhea among infants in the Egyptian countryside. Specifically, he said: “I am certain, I don’t know, but am certain, that there are villages in Egypt in the 21st century where children get diarrhea” because “the mother nurses them and out of ignorance does not undertake personal hygiene of her breasts.”
He said that in rural areas, “there is no water and there is no sanitary sewer drainage.” Mr. Qandil also made a confusing reference to sexual assault, saying that in many villages “the men go to the mosque” while “the women go to the fields and they get raped.”
Mr. Qandil, an agricultural engineer and former water minister, spoke about villages that he said he had visited in the rural province of Beni Suef, 70 miles south of Cairo, the capital. Video of the remarks posted on YouTube shows that several male and female listeners appeared uncomfortable as the prime minister spoke.
On Thursday, Bloomberg News reported that a group of Beni Suef residents responded to Mr. Qandil’s comments by filing a legal complaint for libel and slander against the Prime Minister:
The claim against Prime Minister Hisham Qandil alleges he slandered and insulted the city’s female residents by saying they did not pay enough attention to personal hygiene, resulting in infants coming down with diarrhoea.
The remarks have also sparked controversy online and in Egypt’s raucous Arabic-language media. On Monday night, a talk show host on the independent Tahrir television network, Dina Abdel Fattah, asked her viewers, “Can you imagine, an Egyptian prime minister addressing a topic like that, while we have martyrs in the street, we have people being killed every day, we have entire provinces in a state of unrest?”
On Twitter, several people agreed that it was odd for the prime minister to broach this subject in the midst of Egypt’s political crises. Others were shocked that Mr. Qandil, who holds a Ph.D. from North Carolina State University, would argue that women’s personal hygiene could cause diarrhea.
In the United States, medical consensus says that breast-feeding is beneficial for babies, and few studies appear to have been done on the effect of a mother’s personal hygiene on infant digestion. According to a pamphlet produced by the Office of Women’s Health at the United States Department of Health and Human Services, breast milk is “liquid gold,” rich in nutrients and antibodies, with “just the right amount of fat, sugar, water and protein” to help babies grow.
The Lede: Egyptian Prime Minister Criticized for Soliloquy on 'Ignorant' Mothers
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The Lede: Egyptian Prime Minister Criticized for Soliloquy on 'Ignorant' Mothers
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The Lede: Egyptian Prime Minister Criticized for Soliloquy on 'Ignorant' Mothers
