Collaborative Vision Foundation founders and Quest alumni Matilda Taylor and Yassin Nayel, pictured above.
Quest University graduate Yassin Nayel has always been interested in the socio-economic side of medicine. In particular, he has thought a lot about who gets access to what treatments.
When he was growing up in Egypt, the son of an ophthalmologist, he volunteered with organizations working to stamp out preventable blindness and that passion has stuck with him.
Nayel graduated from Quest in 2018.
While there, his ‘question’ — which is like a major at other universities — was: “How can we ensure equal treatment of infectious diseases worldwide?”
One of the major causes of blindness in Egypt is an infectious disease called trachoma.
Nayel said while quality health care is available in Egypt, it is only accessible to those who can afford it.
“It is definitely good if you have money,” he said over the phone from Baltimore, Maryland, where he is attending medical school.
“[But Egypt] is not a big enough system to be able to accommodate the amount of people who don’t have money.”
Trachoma, therefore, is a disease of poverty.