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Rajana Diet wrote in the “Al-Akhbar” newspaper:
The financial crisis dealt a heavy blow to the dental profession in Lebanon, before the crisis of the “Crown” arrived, to which the coup de grace was almost directed. Today’s dentists have three options: either to support the Bank of Lebanon in search of medical supplies, or to submit to the mercy of merchants and importers, or to permanently close clinics
Three months after the Corona virus crisis, and before that other months of economic-financial crisis, dentists found themselves facing the “disaster,” according to their chief in the north, Rola Deeb. The day before yesterday, those voices were raised aloud, after conditions worsened in the sector that includes 6,000 doctors, and they held an expanded meeting in the Tripoli Union, with the participation of the Beirut Union and the Union of owners of dental laboratories.
Although most of the problems in the dental sector are similar to other sectors in terms of the effect of the financial transfer crisis on the prices of imported medical equipment, tools and materials, it has an additional weight related to the “classification” of this profession in light of the virus. In recent times, several international reports have been published that consider dentistry “one of the most dangerous professions” due to the possibility of exposure of those who practice it to contract an infection, especially because the distance between the dentist and the mouth of the patient is very short. Therefore, the northern and Beirut medical unions decided to limit the treatments in the clinics to “urgent and much-needed medical work.” Today, two months after the decision, doctors face “hunger”. To make matters worse, they feel that they will be the last sectors to return to normal work. Therefore, today’s crisis is “comprehensive,” says Deeb, from the financial crisis that began in late November with banks failing to transfer funds, to the Corona crisis that dentists directly affected.
In the first part, Roger Rubeiz, captain of dentists in Beirut, points out that “the most difficult thing we face is that most of the medical materials and tools used in the clinics are imported.” And since banks refrain from opening credits and transfers, dental supply importers buy dollars from the market to import the products, putting doctors at the mercy of merchants and their price exchange. They worked hard in the line of contacts with the ministries of health and economy and the Bank of Lebanon to try to obtain some facilities; The two unions requested, at the end of last year, that the Bank of Lebanon open credits for “anesthesia” as a medical substance widely used with medicine in dental clinics. However, approval did not come until the end of April last, with the issuance of Circular No. 530, according to which the Bank of Lebanon obtains 85% of the dollars, provided that importers work to secure 15% of ” fresh money “from the parallel market. Doctors managed to obtain this substance, but other than that, it is still subject to the market. For some time, doctors have been looking to support other materials like basic medical supplies, but “until now they are still in the promise category,” says Rbeiz, explaining that the Minister of Economy and Commerce, Raoul Naama, “asked us to classify the supplies as needed for the least necessary, and on this basis we classify the supplies into 3 categories: medical supplies, medical tools and then medical equipment, and we promise to discuss the matter with the Bank of Lebanon and relevant authorities.
The first thing for today’s doctors is to provide facilities for the most used materials for treatments in their clinics, a demand that Deep and Robbes brought yesterday to the Minister of Public Health, Hamad Hassan, where “we asked for the support of the medicines we use in Treatments as one of the basic elements or allow the edition of imported companies’ accounts “. According to Deeb, he pointed to the “phenomenon” of the smuggling of anesthetics out of Lebanon in exchange for the introduction of “not good” materials from abroad, which opened the door for “illegal doctors and attacked the sector.” The two unions also asked the minister to “impose control of the Ministry of Health on the price of dental supplies.”
Doctors waited 4 months before Banque du Liban considered a medicinal substance!
In exchange for “studying the possibility of considering medical materials used in clinics as medical materials to support them,” the Minister of Health asked doctors “not to address the issue of the cost of drugs at this time,” says Rbeiz. But he noted that the “lesson” often takes a long time in light of bureaucratic procedures, and the door is open for merchants and importers to impose what they see fit, while doctors “are helpless, cannot boil the price to the citizen and cannot complete this reality. “
“The suffering continues,” says Deeb, and includes 12,000 people among the doctors and their assistants. And he notes that “many clinics recently closed … some of them sold the purposes of their clinic, especially their tenants, and some are on the same path.” The crisis also extends to the work of dental laboratories. When dentists stop, “the labs will definitely stop.”
Depp finds a summary of doctors’ realities in addition to the slogan recently launched by doctors in France “on est devenu nu”. And if reality continues as it is today, there is an option available: close.
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