Hospitals in Lebanese have almost run out of medical facilities. Doctors are drenched in sweat; they are checking patients lying on stretchers in the reception area of Lebanon’s largest public hospital. Reports say, to save on fuel-air conditioners are turned off, except for those which are in operating rooms or storage units.
After the hospital ran out medics’ scramble to find alternatives to saline solutions. The medical staff is exhausted; the shortages are overwhelming. And with a fresh spike in COVID-19 cases, Lebanon’s hospitals are at a breaking point.
The country’s health sector is a casualty of the multiple crises that have rushed Lebanon into a downward spiral that is a financial and economic meltdown, compounded by a complete failure of the government, runaway corruption and a pandemic that isn’t going away.
Since only a few years ago the collapse is all the more dramatic, Lebanon was a leader in medical care in the Arab world. The region’s rich and famous came to this small Mideast nation of 6 million for everything, from major hospital procedures to plastic surgeries.
THE NEW NORMAL
Ghaidaa al-Saddik, a second-year resident, had just returned from a week off after an exhausting year. Back on duty for a week, she has already cannulated two critical patients in the emergency room, both in their 30s. To admit new patients, she had to struggle a lot knowing how short on supplies the hospital is, scared to be blamed for mistakes and questioning if she is doing her best.
Many patients are asked to bring their own medicines, like steroids. Others are discharged too soon — often to homes where power outages last for days.
“You feel like you are trapped,” said al-Saddik. The 28-year-old spends more nights in the staff halls studying because, at home, she has no electricity. She moved to an apartment closer to the hospital that she shares with two other people to save on rent and transportation. With the collapse of Lebanon’s currency amid the crisis, her salary has lost nearly 90% of its value.
With very few residents, she must now do the rounds for about 30 patients, instead of 10. A senior virologist, her mentor, has left Lebanon — one of many in a brain drain of medical professionals.
“I want to help my people,” she said. “But at the same time, what about me being a better doctor?”
RUNNING ON EMPTY
Lebanon’s largest public hospital is the Rafik Hariri University Hospital is Lebanon’s largest public hospital and the country’s No. 1 hospital for the treatment of COVID-19 patients. So far, Lebanon has registered about 590,000 cases and over 8,000 deaths. The hospital, had to start relying on generators for at least 12 hours a day and is depended on the state power company.
Since last Monday, the generators have been the only source of power, running non-stop. Most of the hospital’s diesel, sold at the black market at five times the official price, is either donated by political parties or international aid groups. Some rooms run only electrical fans in the sweltering summer heat in order to save on fuel. Not all hospital lifts are working. The ER admits only life-threatening cases while the bed capacity has been reduced by about 15%.
Its director, Firas Abiad says, it is a continuous crisis that has left the hospital always on the brink. There are “shortages of almost everything.” Every day, he struggles to secure more fuel — the hospital has a maximum two-day supply at any time. Shelves are thin on medicines, including for cancer patients and dialysis. A new aid shipment of blood serum will last just a few days.
“We can hardly get by,” said Jihad Bikai, head of the ER. He recently had to send a critical patient to another hospital because he no longer has a vascular surgeon on staff.
WHAT HAPPENED?
Lebanon’s financial crisis, rooted in years of corruption and mismanagement, spilled out into the streets in late 2019, with antigovernment protests and demands for accountability. Political leaders have since failed to agree on a recovery programme or even a new government — leaving the previous one in perpetual but stumped caretaker role. The World Bank has described the crisis as among the worst in over a century. In just two and a half years, the majority of the population has been plunged into poverty, the national currency is collapsing and foreign reserves have run dry. Power outages have for years forced a dependence on private generators but the crisis took on new dimensions this summer as fuel and diesel became scarce, disrupting the work of hospitals, bakeries, internet providers and many other businesses. Then last August, a massive explosion at Beirut’s port — when hundreds of tons of improperly stored ammonium nitrate ignited — destroyed entire neighborhoods of the city and killed 214 people.
Thousands were injured, inundating hospitals, some of which lost members of their staff and were forced to shut down temporarily. On a recent afternoon at the Rafik Hariri hospital, nurse Mustafa Harqous, 39, tried to ignore the ruckus outside the coronavirus ER: patients with oxygen masks waiting for a bed to free up, families pressing to visit sick relatives, others arguing over out-of-stock drugs. He went about his work in the 25-bed room. Except for a month-old baby, the patients were mostly men in their 30s and 40s.
“Some people understand the shortages are not our fault,” he said. “But many don’t.” He worries how he will fill up his car for the drive home, an hour and a half away. The government, he said, is “leaving people in the middle of the sea with no rescue boat.”
