Doctors fear Lebanon’s struggling hospitals could collapse if war escalates

Doctors in southern Lebanon have raised concerns that already struggling hospitals could collapse if the war escalates.

"We’ve already had to treat 51 people wounded by explosions in the last month or so. Seventeen of those died, or arrived dead. More than that and we’d be overwhelmed,” Dr Mounes Klakesh told Reuters. 

Klakesh, director of the Marjayoun Hospital in southern Lebanon, said it serves nearly 300,000 people in the area. It has 14 emergency beds and struggles to operate because of a lack of staff and, crucially, lack of fuel.

The hospital runs on generators 20 hours a day and has to pay up to $20,000 a month for the fuel. 

“None of that money comes from the government any more. We rely on what funds the hospital has from one week to the next,” Klakesh said.

Dozens more public hospitals are in a similarly precarious state. Lebanon's economic collapse in 2019 left them barely able to cope in peacetime.

Now, an escalating conflict on the southern border with Israel is pushing the healthcare sector into a new crisis.