Messi confirms Egypt trip after delay due to Barcelona’s recent heavy loss

Argentinean footballer Lionel Messi will finally visit Egypt on Tuesday for a campaign to fight hepatitis C, a visit that was postponed in the aftermath of Barcelona’s scathing ChampIOns league defeat to PSG on Tuesday last week.

The Argentine striker was scheduled to arrive to Cairo on Wednesday but a statement issued by the promotion’s sponsor company suggested Messi could not leave his team at such a predicament following the heavy defeat in Paris.

Supported by the Egyptian ministries of tourism and aviation respectively, the campaign was launched by the Egyptian government in June in order to motivate global Hepatitis C patients to seek cheap and effective treatment in Egypt.

According to a statement issued by the company promoting the campaign, Hepatitis C treatment in Europe costs around 100,000 Euros when it does not exceed 4,900 Euros in Egypt.

Egypt’s efforts in combating the disease have been praised by the World Health Organization (WHO), after a state-run campaign treated nearly one million Egyptians from Hepatitis C between 2015 and 2017.

It is the second time Messi postpones his Egypt trip, after a Cairo cathedral bombing in December delayed the visit’s original schedule last December.