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There are no patients in treatment on the damaged seventh floor of Saint George Hospital in Beirut, where doors have splintered and cables hang from the ceiling. The city’s destroyed port, now a wasteland, can be seen through the cracked and broken upper deck windows.
Yet just three floors below, gown and mask nurses move around a partially restored room, while two babies sleep on plastic cots oblivious to the sounds of hammering and drilling beneath them.
“I don’t allow myself time to cry or get depressed because I have to be positive,” said Iskander Nehme, the hospital’s medical director, who lost four of his nurses in the massive explosion at the port on August 4. .
A month later, Beirut remains traumatized by the catastrophic explosion that swept through the port and surrounding neighborhoods, killing 190 people and injuring thousands. Yet in the face of financial collapse and political instability, Lebanon’s capital is tenaciously rebuilding itself.
It is a dismal enterprise, run by volunteers and individuals in the absence of support from the bankrupt and discredited Lebanese state.
Saint George Hospital alone sustained an estimated $ 35 million in damage © Chris McGrath / Getty
The country’s leaders have largely failed: either in the direction of reconstruction or in seeking a desperately needed bailout from the IMF. It took the intervention of French President Emmanuel Macron to pressure them to elect a new prime minister who now has the task of forming a government.
Even before the explosion, Lebanon’s worst economic crisis in 30 years had pushed more than half of the population into poverty. The collapse has been compounded by civil unrest, with massive protests breaking out in October, toppling the government.
After the explosion, caused by explosive materials improperly stored in the port for years and widely attributed to official negligence, furious demonstrations brought down a second administration.
The worst part of the crisis is Lebanon’s fragmented healthcare system, which was already grappling with a surge in coronavirus infections that have risen rapidly from single digits just a few weeks ago to hundreds a day since the port explosion.
Seventeen Beirut hospitals were damaged in the blast, and Saint George alone suffered damage worth an estimated $ 35 million. An additional 500 beds are needed to make up for the losses in the devastated facility. Many hospitals have been forced to launch their own fundraising campaigns.
Built after the end of Lebanon’s 15-year civil conflict in 1990, Saint George Hospital was designed to withstand a war: its operating rooms and critical facilities were built underground to protect them in the event that fighting returned.
Saint George Hospital is designed to withstand war © Hannah McKay / Reuters
However, the port explosion destroyed all the upper floors of the hospital. But the room on the fourth floor was partially salvaged and after a cleanup, the surgeries are running again, albeit at limited capacity. “To live in Lebanon you have to accept that there will never be stability,” Nehme said.
Like many others, doctors working in Lebanon face an unsettling future. The Lebanese pound has lost 80% of its value on the black market compared to the official exchange rate, causing a spiral of inflation.
“The whole economic situation, Covid-19 and then the explosion, was the perfect storm,” said Ghina Ghazeeri, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the American University of Beirut Medical Center.
Called to care for an expectant mother who had gone into labor on the day of the explosion, Dr. Ghazeeri was on her way to her hospital when the explosion occurred shortly after 6 PM, showering her with glass. She kept pressing and 40 minutes later she gave birth to a girl using the flashlight of a mobile phone.
The destroyed harbor can be seen through the cracked windows of Saint George Hospital © Chloe Cornish / FT
However, the psychological toll on healthcare workers had been immense, he said, explaining that he relived the details of the explosion in virtually every patient consultation. “This is more than resilience. . . This is more than a human being can tolerate. “
Before Lebanon’s economy began its sharp decline in October 2019, the country had one of the strongest healthcare sectors in the region, with 21 doctors per 10,000 inhabitants, according to data from the World Health Organization. a higher rate than Turkey.
However, the world-class private hospitals, which once attracted medical tourists from across the region, are no match for the smaller public sector, where underfunded institutions have struggled. Palestinian and Syrian refugees from Lebanon, estimated at around 1.5 million of the country’s approximately 7.5 million people, depend on health services provided by NGOs.
For those without insurance or state protection, including hundreds of thousands of migrant workers, the system can be treacherous. To force patients or their families to pay their bills, some private hospitals refuse to discharge newborns or corpses until medical bills are paid, according to aid workers.
Rayah Touma Sawaya, 23, was among the doctors-in-training who rushed to provide emergency aid on August 4 when the explosion occurred. But she is grappling with the difficult decision faced by many of Lebanon’s talented youth: stay or leave.
She really wants to stay in Lebanon, where her family is and where she feels settled. But, she said, “under the circumstances at the moment, I’m not sure we have a choice.”
