Caretaker Health Minister Firass Abiad visits Batroun Governmental Hospital, July 17, 2024. (Credit: Michel Hallak/OLJ)
BEIRUT — Caretaker Health Minister Firass Abiad said on Thursday that Lebanon's medical supplies and the amount of medicines are sufficient for at least four months in case of war, according to local media outlets.
Hezbollah and Israel have been engaged in clashes for months along the Lebanese-Israeli border in parallel with the Hamas-Israel war in Gaza. The Middle East has recently witnessed a significant escalation in violence triggered by an Israeli airstrike on Beirut's southern suburbs on Tuesday night and a separate attack in Tehran that killed Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh.
Abiad acknowledged that the health sector suffers from a shortage of medical resources, but stressed that a "plan must be developed for how to use the available resources," noting that "the Health Ministry's plan aims to work on training the sector to deal with the wounded."
He added that the ministry "covers any war-wounded in coordination with hospitals."
Meanwhile, the Head of the Hospital Owners Syndicate Sleiman Haroun said that "all private hospitals have been prepared," according to the Lebanese newspaper al-Modon.
"We have trained medical staff and conducted maneuvers inside the hospitals to ensure readiness in the event of war," he said.
On Wednesday, the Syndicate of Pharmaceutical Factories reassured in a statement that pharmaceutical factories will be "fully prepared for any emergency" Lebanon may witness, adding that the industry is trying its best to maintain the supply of essential and chronic medications to meet the needs of the country's hospitals.
On the same day, the president of the Association of Petroleum Importing Companies (APIC), Maroun Shammas, assured L'Orient Today that fuel imports to Lebanon are continuing at a normal pace despite the security events. He said gasoline and fuel oil stocks were sufficient to cover the country’s needs “for a month if consumption remains at a normal rate and as long as tankers continue to serve the oil terminals on the Lebanese coast."
In October, Abiad said that any war would be more challenging to face than the 2006 war as Lebanon back then "was not suffering from the mass emigration of doctors and the shortage 0f medicines" as a result of the economic crisis. Abiad added back then that Lebanon "needs to start working to avoid the worst in the event of the airport and ports being bombed because the country will no longer be able to import medicines in such a scenario."