Hammered by crises, Lebanon's hospitals struggle to prepare for war with Israel
The threat of war with Israel has raised questions about whether hospitals in Lebanon can handle yet another crisis.
BEIRUT — As Dr. Jihad Saadeh, the director of Rafiq Hariri University Hospital, the largest public hospital in Beirut, strolls through the facility, he rattles off the preparations staff have made for a much-anticipated full-scale war between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group.
He points to a new triage system that can whisk critical patients to high-level care “in seconds,” and a just-finished facility outside the entrance that can wash away weaponized poisons like white phosphorus. Fresh training, he says, will transform the dialysis clinic and other specialized areas into trauma surgeries in no time.
But is the hospital prepared for war — or a “mass casualty incident” in physician-speak? “Not very much. We are trying to prepare as much as possible,” Saadeh says, estimating that the hospital can withstand about 10 days of war before it will need outside supplies.
Hariri University Hospital is trying to prepare for a war between Israel and Hezbollah.Marwan Naamani / dpa/picture alliance via Getty Images fileThe threat of war has raised pressing questions about whether hospitals in Lebanon, which many assume will be on the front lines of such a conflict, can handle yet another crisis.
Saadeh diagnoses Lebanon’s health system as suffering from the same illnesses that afflict the country at-large: an economic crisis and soaring inflation; years of political deadlock and mistrust — particularly since a massive explosion rocked Beirut’s port in 2020; lingering symptoms from the pandemic; a crushing refugee burden; and the shadow of the last war with Israel two decades ago.
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