Lack of co-ordination in Lebanon s stretched health system and the strain of the economic crisis prevents coronavirus patients from getting the care they need
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Medical staff in an intensive care unit for coronavirus patients at Rafik Hariri University Hospital in Beirut. In January 2021 alone, Lebanon recorded 1,627 deaths related to COVID-19. This is more than the total number of deaths 1,455 recorded in 2020, according to Lebanon’s Ministry of Health.
The number of COVID-19 deaths has increased by 50 times since the Beirut port explosion compared to the total number of deaths recorded in the first six months of the pandemic. These numbers should be a wake-up call for the country’s leaders to invest in public health if they want to avert future health crises, says Project HOPE.
Doctors treat patients in cars as Lebanon s hospitals buckle amid a surge of Covid patients We re getting to the point of true disaster , a doctor warns, as extreme lockdown and economic crisis threaten civil unrest
1 February 2021 • 12:00pm
A patient treated in their car at the emergency care unit at St George s Hospital
Credit: Nabil Mounzer/Shutterstock
Doctors in Lebanon are treating patients in parked cars, outside hospitals, in corridors, cupboards and canteens as doctors warn the country could be on its way towards a dreaded “Italian scenario” as the death rate continues to rise.
“We had no room in the hospital, we didn’t even have enough stretchers - so for three or four days in January we were treating Covid patients in their cars in the car park,” said Dr Andre Kozaily, the director of Bouar governmental hospital in Kesrouane, a 30-minute drive north of the capital, Beirut. The hospital had just weeks before been turned into a Covid-only facility.
ambulances are
dropping Covid- positive patients in need of urgent care in hospital car parks and wards lacking
life-saving equipment or drugs as doctors battle a sharp increase in the number of critical cases, health professionals told
The National.
“There was a day last week when we didn’t have a single ventilator left. We borrowed one from another hospital, but each day, we are on the brink of disaster,” said Georges Ghanem, chief medical officer at the Lebanese American University – Rizk Hospital.
The new year brought record-high numbers of coronavirus cases after restrictions were eased during Christmas and New Year festivities.