BEIRUT: Lebanon’s deepening economic crisis has piled pressure on hospitals, leaving them ill-equipped to face any new wave of the coronavirus, a top hospital director has warned.
Already struggling with shortages of medicine and an exodus of staff abroad, the country’s health facilities are now also having to contend with almost round-the-clock power cuts.
“All hospitals... are now less prepared than they were during the wave at the start of the year,” said Firass Abiad, the manager of the largest public hospital in the country battling COVID-19.
“Medical and nursing staff have left, medicine that was once available has run out,” and ever lengthening cuts to the mains power supply have left hospitals under constant threat.
Even the Rafik Hariri University Hospital he runs has been struggling to cope.
“We only get two to three hours of mains electricity, and for the rest of the time it’s up to the generators,” Abiad said.
On top of worrying they could burn out, “we have the huge burden of having to constantly be on the hunt for fuel oil.”
Huge demand for the increasingly scarce commodity has driven up prices by more than 80 percent since June 17.
Even at the prestigious RHUH, some medicines are routinely running out.
“Some days it’s antibiotics, others it’s anaesthetics,” the hospital chief said.
Sometimes “we’re forced to ask the patients’ relatives to go and try to find the medicine from another hospital or a pharmacy.”
After dropping over the spring, COVID-19 cases are on the rise again as Lebanese expats flood home for the summer, and many gather with family and friends.
On Thursday alone, 98 people tested positive for COVID-19 on arrival at Beirut airport, the health ministry said.
“It could be catastrophic if this rise in coronavirus numbers leads to a spike like the one we saw at the start of the year,” Abiad said.
Abiad said the solution was better social distancing and more inoculations in a country where just 15 percent of the population have been fully vaccinated.
On Thursday, private hospitals warned of a looming “catastrophe” as some were only hours away from running out of fuel to power their generators.
The following day, pharmacies said they were going on indefinite strike over persistent shortages of medicines, just weeks after drug importers said the central bank owed millions of dollars to their suppliers abroad.
Pharmacies said importers are refusing to make deliveries as they are unhappy with the new prices for drugs that are no longer subsidised, and cannot get lines of credit for those that still are.
Around 1,300 doctors have emigrated since the economic crisis began in 2019, with the numbers picking up over the past 12 months, the doctors’ syndicate says.
Since February last year, Lebanon has recorded 553,615 cases of COVID-19, 7,890 of them fatal, according to health ministry figures.
Lebanon can’t handle next COVID-19 wave, warns hospital chief
https://arab.news/chn93
Lebanon can’t handle next COVID-19 wave, warns hospital chief
- After dropping over the spring, COVID-19 cases are on the rise again as Lebanese expats flood home for the summer
Syrian government vows to protect Kurds in Aleppo, accuses SDF of planting explosives
- Kurdish-led group targeting neighborhoods with mortars, machine guns, Ministry of Defense says
- Army declares Ashrafieh, Sheikh Maqsoud ‘closed military zone’ after hundreds of civilians evacuated
LONDON: The Syrian government on Wednesday affirmed its commitment to protect all citizens, including Kurds, as armed tensions in Aleppo between the Syrian army and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces continued for a fourth day.
The Ministry of Defense accused the SDF of planting explosives on roads and setting booby traps in the Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh neighborhoods, and bombarding them with mortar shells and heavy machine gun fire.
The army designated the two neighborhoods a “closed military zone” after the Syrian Arab Red Crescent evacuated 850 civilians from the area.
The government said in a statement that the SDF played no role in the city’s security and military affairs.
“This confirms that the exclusive responsibility for maintaining security and protecting residents falls upon the Syrian state and its legitimate institutions, in accordance with the constitution and applicable laws,” it said.
Protecting all citizens, including Kurds, was a non-negotiable responsibility upheld without discrimination based on ethnicity or affiliation, it said.
It also rejected any portrayal of its security measures as targeting a specific community, according to the Syrian Arab News Agency.
“The authorities concerned stress that those displaced from areas of tension are exclusively civilians, all of them Kurdish citizens who left their neighborhoods out of fear of escalation,” the statement said.
“They sought refuge in areas under the control of the state and its official institutions, which clearly demonstrates the trust of Kurdish citizens in the Syrian state and its ability to provide them with protection and security and refutes claims alleging that they face threats or targeted actions.”
The government called for the withdrawal of armed groups from Aleppo.
At least three civilians and a Syrian soldier have been killed and dozens more injured in Aleppo since Tuesday. Authorities have accused the SDF of targeting medical and educational facilities.
The escalation in violence has dealt a blow to an agreement between the two sides that was meant to be implemented by the end of last year.
The Syrian government reached an agreement with the SDF in March that included plans to integrate the group’s military, territory and natural resources, including oil fields, into the new government in Damascus.
