BEIRUT – The nursing staff of health facilities across Lebanon staged sit-ins on Tuesday to protest the effects of the compounded crises the country is facing, and to demand an improvement of their working conditions.

Here’s what we know:

    • The nursing staff of Tripoli Governmental Hospital gathered outside the facility’s entrance demanding “financial support, specifically for their childrens’ schooling fees, and increases in their salaries and transportation allowances,” the state-run National News Agency reported. The protesters also called on the hospital’s administration to appoint additional nurses to alleviate the workload of the current staff.

    • Similar protests took place at Halba Governmental Hospital in Akkar on Tuesday morning, during which the nursing staff decried their loss of purchasing power and demanded pay raises.

    • This sentiment was echoed by nurses at the Nabih Berri Governmental Hospital in southern Lebanon, whose sit-in outside the hospital’s emergency entrance highlighted the “dangers of the departure of medical personnel.” The hospital’s administrator Hassan Wazni called on the state to intervene by “taking care of and supporting” the medical sector, warning against a potential “health crisis” if the health minister doesn’t intervene “before it’s too late.”

    • The socio-economic and financial crises in Lebanon have severely impacted health facilities’ abilities to provide care, notably due to a shortage of medication, materials and medical equipment, and to the reduced workforce, from which 40 percent of doctors and 30 percent of nurses have migrated, according to a September estimate by the World Health Organization.