From Our Foreign Correspondent

A Remarkable Success Story in the Nile Delta An invitation to visit Mansoura University to view their ?caI progress and to give four lectures was accepted w'th enthusiasm and considerable interest, though with ?ome reservations as my wife was reluctant to leave Bristol where two new granddaughters had recently arnved. The Department of Urology and Nephrology at Mansoura had already been recognised in Egypt as one ?f the leading centres for this specialty by the award ?'9ht years ago of one of the first gold medals of the ^gyptian Urological Association to our colleague and ^rmer Registrar at Southmead Hospital, Professor Mohamed Ghoneim. It was Mohamed who had arranged *he invitation and I fully anticipated finding a high standard of work. I was agreeably surprised to find a very high quality of equipment and other facilities despite the sad state of the economy in Egypt. In fact the Department I Provided such an oasis of excellence it is worthy of a special report. The Urology and Nephrology Department occupies a ^ew and architecturally designed building within the University campus, elegantly landscaped and situated adjacent to the main University Hospital so that although ^ministered as an independent unit it is not isolated r?rn other specialties, or from the Department of General Surgery and General Medicine. The Department consists of a teaching and administrative unit, a hospital of '20 beds, a residency and, adjacent to the Department, here are full research facilities occupying three floors ^'th a large animal house on the ground floor. A suite of hree operating theatres and an endoscopy room with w'n tables is used to full capacity five days a week. I was driven up an impressive ramp to the entrance of I .he teaching hospital, where I was received by Mohamed |n a splendid foyer artistically designed around an essen'allV functional layout. The next floor was approached V a neat staircase curving round a small, well tended , lr|door garden. Mohamed's room was at the end of the I corridor where it gave an immediate impression of e"icient organisation and attention to detail as well as scrupulous cleanliness, yet at the same time a comfort-