Egypt 2025 - IFMSA exchange

Honest review on my exchange in Egypt

Hi, I’m Hana and I spent my exchange in Egypt, in very small and conservative city Kafr el Sheikh.
Before coming to Egypt, I’ve read multiple reviews and all of them were positive. So firstly, I would like to say that the experience hugely depends on the LC you get. The time I spent in my LC was full of problems, arguments and insults towards us.

We were 4 girls, lived together in a big apartment. But the apartment was awful. No one has cleaned it before we came. Fridge was not working for the first 3 days and was full of mould. Kitchen had no microwave, and the kettle was not working. Our shower was literally above the toilet. I want to say that I was not expecting much, but in the same time I expected basic life conditions and not bed full of dust and carpets full of everything.

We were not allowed to leave our apartment alone, so each time we wanted to buy water or go somewhere we had to call one of the CPs. Our CPs were nice and helpful, which is not something I can say about our LEO. I didn’t feel good in his presence. He had inappropriate remarks towards us; he was not respecting us and our opinions. He was not allowed to go into our apartment (that’s somehow illegal in Egypt) and was not respecting that and kept coming. My advice to anyone who wants to go to Egypt is - make sure you are placed in bigger city. My first choice was Cairo, but unfortunately, I got the most conservative city (even other Egyptians confirmed that), which was not any of my options.

When it comes to food - we didn’t get pocket money. We were provided one lunch per hospital day. We had to pay for our food on the days we were not in hospital and stayed in our city, other days in social program food was provided in hotels. During the days we travelled we had only snacks.

When it comes to hospital and my clinical internship, we were not allowed to visit university hospital, only a private one. I was placed in OBG department, which was my first choice. Since we were in private hospital we were allowed only to observe. Mostly we all attended C-sections (even though 2 of our girls were placed in department of cardio thoracic surgery - which doesn’t exist in this city), but we saw also mastectomy, hysterectomy, appendectomy, cholecystectomy and hernias. During the whole month we were in hospital for 6 days, each time maximum for 3 hours.

Now the good part of this exchange - social program. When it comes to social program Egypt has probably one of the best social programs. We were travelling for most of the month.
First trip was to Cairo - pyramids, the Great Egyptian Museum and shopping at Khan el-Khalili. This was one day trip. Second trip took four days and was in Siwa. We could swim in salt lakes, which was an amazing experience, we did sandboarding, had dinner under the stars in Sahara Desert, visited few temples and met a lot of new friends from other LCs.
Third trip was the National week in Marsa Alam. With two days of travelling, this one took 6 days in total. We stayed in resort, went snorkelling and we were swimming with dolphins in the Red Sea, which was breathtaking.
Fourth trip was a cruise on Nile from Aswan to Luxor. We stayed in a cruise and stopped in the cities to visit multiple temples. We had a very good guide, so we learnt something about Egyptian history. Because of multiple arguments and the fact that from 27th of August we couldn’t go to hospital, on 28th we left Kafr el-Sheikh to Cairo. On 29th we booked a private guide to Alexandria and went on our last trip there. We saw Roman amphitheatre, catacombs and a citadel.

The last point is money. Before we arrived, LEO informed us about prices of the trips. All of them were voluntary of course. But prices changed when we arrived. LEO could not tell us exactly what is in the price and what did we pay for. I even asked the president of the LC why we paid more for some things, and he didn’t explain anything.

To summarise it, if you aim for real internships with medical experience, Egypt is not for you. if you want to travel and experience the country not only like a tourist but closer to locals and you are willing to spend more money - go for it.