We’ve spent the last three weeks working mornings at Haifa Hospital, one of 5 hospitals in Lebanon run by the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS). It’s located in Burj al-Barajneh refugee camp in South Beirut. The hospital used to be a rehab center for patients who had been injured in the years of fighting, but after Israel destroyed most of the Palestinian hospitals here in the 1980s, they converted the building into a hospital.
To say that it is lacking does little to describe the scarcity of resources here. Coming from a university hospital where the equipment, technology and resources is always the newest and most expensive, it is hard to believe they are able to provide any inpatient care here. It also makes so much of what we do in US hospitals seem exorbitantly wasteful. There is a small ICU with three beds, but their one ventilator was donated years ago and no one here was ever trained to use it, so most patients who are very sick need to be transferred elsewhere.
Yesterday we met with the director of the PRCS who shared stories of his early experience working in villages in South Lebanon during the eighties. Trapped in the town with only one other doctor for six months, he said that he did over 30 amputations – without anesthesia and with knives borrowed from the butcher. They stabilized patients as best they could and then waited for the siege to be over in order to evacuate them. The hospital here is better equipped, but not by much.
the ED trauma room
A few days ago I assisted during a c-section. The power went out three times during the surgery. Each time as we paused, motionless, waiting for 5-10 seconds before the generator kicked in, I wondered what would happen if this occurred during a critical step in the surgery or if the generator, like so many other things here, malfunctioned and didn’t turn on. The obstetricians seemed hardly to notice, continuing with the surgery as if the outages had never occurred.
Its hard to describe the poverty in these camps and the sense of frustration and anger. Refugees have extremely limited civil rights in Lebanon - they are denied the right to vote, to own land, and to work in over 70 professions. The physicians, most of whom have medical degrees from old Soviet Block countries are only allowed to work in the PRCS hospitals and earn about one fifth of what Lebanese doctors earn. Many young people no longer have any desire to attend university, since a degree doesn't provide them with any additional opportunities.
The political situation in Israel and Palestine as well as in Lebanon makes any resolution seem impossible. And yet there is incredible hope for a return to Palestine and conversations inevitably turn to this topic. Most of the Palestinians that we've met here have never been to Palestine, but they all talk about the villages of their parents and grandparents and their desire to return.
this sign is posted all over the hospital
To say that it is lacking does little to describe the scarcity of resources here. Coming from a university hospital where the equipment, technology and resources is always the newest and most expensive, it is hard to believe they are able to provide any inpatient care here. It also makes so much of what we do in US hospitals seem exorbitantly wasteful. There is a small ICU with three beds, but their one ventilator was donated years ago and no one here was ever trained to use it, so most patients who are very sick need to be transferred elsewhere.
a rusty oxygen canister in the PRCS ambulance
Yesterday we met with the director of the PRCS who shared stories of his early experience working in villages in South Lebanon during the eighties. Trapped in the town with only one other doctor for six months, he said that he did over 30 amputations – without anesthesia and with knives borrowed from the butcher. They stabilized patients as best they could and then waited for the siege to be over in order to evacuate them. The hospital here is better equipped, but not by much.
the ED trauma room
A few days ago I assisted during a c-section. The power went out three times during the surgery. Each time as we paused, motionless, waiting for 5-10 seconds before the generator kicked in, I wondered what would happen if this occurred during a critical step in the surgery or if the generator, like so many other things here, malfunctioned and didn’t turn on. The obstetricians seemed hardly to notice, continuing with the surgery as if the outages had never occurred.
Its hard to describe the poverty in these camps and the sense of frustration and anger. Refugees have extremely limited civil rights in Lebanon - they are denied the right to vote, to own land, and to work in over 70 professions. The physicians, most of whom have medical degrees from old Soviet Block countries are only allowed to work in the PRCS hospitals and earn about one fifth of what Lebanese doctors earn. Many young people no longer have any desire to attend university, since a degree doesn't provide them with any additional opportunities.
water lines in the camp
The political situation in Israel and Palestine as well as in Lebanon makes any resolution seem impossible. And yet there is incredible hope for a return to Palestine and conversations inevitably turn to this topic. Most of the Palestinians that we've met here have never been to Palestine, but they all talk about the villages of their parents and grandparents and their desire to return.
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