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‘It’s hell’: Lebanon’s pharmacists, doctors fear more deaths as crisis worsens
Published: 15 July ,2021: 01:42 PM GSTUpdated: 15 July ,2021: 03:57 PM GST
As the economic crisis deepens in Lebanon, doctors and pharmacists fear the medicine shortage will result in more deaths.
Anger boiled over in the country this week after a 10-month-old girl died in Mazboud village on Saturday. It came after she was unable to receive adequate hospital treatment due to severe medical shortages, her family said.
Jouri al-Sayyid’s lungs failed after they became inflamed due to an untreated three-day fever, according to her family. With no medicines available at the hospital she was admitted to and all nearby pharmacies closed, the baby girl died in her father’s arms.
Drug importers have warned that Lebanon has already exhausted much of its medicine supplies, and the central bank has yet to pay the millions of dollars it owes to foreign suppliers.
Already reeling from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic and the consequences of the deadly Beirut explosion, the currency has lost over 90 percent of its value.
With the health sector barely surviving, health officials warn that without intervention it will soon succumb to overwhelming pressure.
“It’s hell. We are living in misery, quite frankly, because we can’t help people solve their problems. Even chronic medicines are not available. Even Panadol is sometimes not available,” Dr. Khaldoun al-Sharif, a Lebanese pharmacist, told Al Arabiya English.
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