Mrs. Mubarak presides NCCM's Technical Committee, Sunday

Egypt's First Lady Suzanne Mubarak presides, Sunday, the first meeting of the Consultative Technical Committee at the National Council of Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM).

Mrs. Mubarak will review the activities and achievements of the council over the past years and will discuss its priorities and plan of action in the coming period to improve conditions of motherhood and childhood in Egypt, NCCM Secretary General Mushira Khattab has said.

Mrs. Mubarak will also launch on Sunday a new service for care of children with special needs, she added. This free-of-charge service is a hotline through which physicians, psychiatrists and social workers on duty will answer inquiries from the children's families round the clock.

A toll-free phone number will be allocated for these inquiries. The council's secretary-general said that the service, the first of its kind in Egypt, was the product of cooperation between the council and the Cabinet's Information and Decision-Making Support Center. The Egyptian Telecommunications Company, the Qasr el-Eini Medical Faculty, the Ain Shams University and the Hearing and Speech Institute are also taking part, she added.