CAIRO — Ibrahim Sayed Metwaly tends to place one hand on his abdomen when he speaks. The 52-year-old is suffering from advanced, and untreated, hepatitis C, and the yellow tinge to his skin suggests that his liver has begun to fail.

"I don't get any treatment. For one and a half years I have been going to the doctors to get the papers signed, the tests completed, but still I get no treatment," he said, frustration evident in his voice. "I need the medicine. All I want is the medicine. I am getting sicker and still, I have no medicine."

Ahmed Ahly, a taxi driver, is supporting two handicapped daughters and does not have the time, or money, to receive treatment for hepatitis C. Teacher Sara Sweif is pregnant, and she does not know how she will prevent her baby from becoming infected with the disease. And former storekeeper Farim Shabany is dying from advanced liver failure after living decades with hepatitis C and using only home remedies, like onion and warm salt water.

With World Health Organization estimates that up to 20% of Egyptians carry the virus, Metwaly, Ahly, and Sweif are just a small snapshot of the Egyptians for whom a "miracle cure" could change everything. Earlier this month, when news spread that the Egyptian military had come up with such a cure, which would be 100% effective in curing AIDS in addition to 95% effective in curing hep C, many saw an answer to their problems.

The only problem was that the doctor, Maj. Gen. Ibrahim Abdul Atti, appears to be a fraud. He has since been widely discredited by his peers and has had his credentials questioned. His miracle device appears to be little more than a staple gun with a radio antenna attached.

Dr. Essam Heggy, a scientist and an adviser to Egypt's interim president, said the televised conference by Atti — which panned to show Egyptian army chief Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in the audience — was a "scandal for Egypt" that "hurts the image of scientists and science" in the country. "The real achievement is to realize our problems and resolve them together," he wrote on Facebook, "not to invent illusionary solutions to real problems."

While the miracle cure has now become the punchline of countless jokes, many in Egypt continue to believe in it. Egypt's health ministry has announced that it will reproduce Atti's device and begin offering treatments, and reports have surfaced of Egyptians trying to offer bribes to senior military and health officials who they believe can get them the miracle cure.

Sweif, who is six months pregnant with her first child, boasts that she has convinced her husband to sell the family car in order to put aside money for the treatment she feels the army can provide.

"I am sure we will need money for this," she said, speaking from a market near her home in Cairo's Midan Kit Kat neighborhood. "We will need money to pay for the treatment and also for the [bribes] to get on the list of those to be treated."

She believes that a secret list is being composed of those who will get first priority to the army's new cure, and wants to ensure that her name is included. While the government-run institute in which she currently receives treatments for free has told her they can help prevent the virus from transferring to her baby, she appears to much prefer a cure, as promised by the army.

"I want to be without this virus — only our army can give me that," she says.