Zabbaleen
The Zabbaleen ( ', ) is a word which literally means "garbage people" in Egyptian Arabic. The contemporary use of the word in Egyptian Arabic is to mean "garbage collectors". In cultural contexts, the word refers to teenagers and adults who have served as Cairo's informal garbage collectors since approximately the 1940s. The Zabbaleen (singular: ', ) are also known as Zarraba (singular: Zarrab), which means "pig-pen operators." The word ' came from the Egyptian Arabic word ' (, ) which means "garbage".
Zabbaleen
The Zabbaleen community is characterized by both low health and high rates of disease, especially those related to their garbage collecting activities. According to Assad, "reported infant mortality rates, particularly from tetanus, were extremely high. In 1981, infant mortality was estimated at about 240 deaths per thousand births (EQI Report #3, 1981: 36)." This infant mortality rate dropped to 117 per thousand in 1991, but the infant mortality rate in the Mokattam community is still substantially higher than the average infant mortality rate of Cairo for the 1990-95 period, which was 45.6 per thousand.