UN says four million will lose access to water in coming days as fuel crisis worsens
https://www.independent.co.uk-Bel Trew
A doctor walks through a corridor of the government-run Rafik Hariri University Hospital during a power outage in Beirut this month (AP)
Crippling fuel, medical and staff shortages are pushing Lebanon’s healthcare system to the brink of collapse, officials have warned, as the United Nations says four million people could lose access to safe water in the next few days.
The tiny Mediterranean country is in the grips of one of the worst economic collapses in the last 150 years, according to the World Bank.
The crisis, rooted in decades of corruption and mismanagement, has seen the currency lose 90 per cent of its value and so massive shortages in imported essentials like diesel and medicines, right in the middle of the pandemic.
Firass Abiad, head of Lebanon’s main coronavirus hospital Rafic Rafik Hariri University Hospital (RHUH), told The Independent that supplies like cancer medication and antibiotics are dwindling, meaning medical centres across the country have had to halt some treatments, endangering lives.
Making matters worse is the fact that the hospital, and others like it, have had no mains power for the entire last week, meaning they have to run entirely on diesel generators. Diesel, sold on the black market at five times the official price, is running out, so they are rationing electricity and downsizing bed capacity by 15 per cent.
“There are diesel shortages, fuel shortages, shortages of medicines and staff. We have had to interrupt the treatment of cancer patients because of a lack of medicines but even that is secondary to the fuel crisis,” Dr Abiad said.
Chronic petrol shortages have prevented medics from getting to work, at a time when the hospital is already understaffed: a third of RHUH’s doctors, and 15 per cent of the nursing staff, have moved overseas in the last year due to the deteriorating conditions.
“We are still in freefall, in fact, we are accelerating,” Dr Abiad added. “Even if you try to sort out one aspect of the problem, another aspect will come and take over.”
His warnings came just over a week after the American University of Beirut Medical Center hospital put out a plea for fuel on social media saying that without it they would be forced to shut off their generators killing dozens of people on ventilators and nearly 200 who need kidney dialysis. Diesel for the generators was eventually sourced with just a day to spare.
Hospitals administrators also told The Independent they are stockpiling water amid warnings from the UN that four million people in the country of just six million will lose access to safe water in the coming days, as the country’s chief electricity provider, Electricité du Liban (EDL), has halted main power service lines to water authorities.
Over the weekend Unicef’s Executive Director Henrietta Fore called for the urgent restoration of a power supply saying it was the only solution to the crisis.
“Last month, Unicef warned that more than 71 per cent of the population of Lebanon could run out of water this summer. Since then, this perilous situation has continued, with critical services including water and sanitation, power networks and healthcare under huge strain,” she added.
Her words echoed statements by Najat Rochdi, UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Lebanon, a week earlier who warned that wastewater treatment systems have had to cut back on their operations, jeopardising environmental and public health.
The escalating financial crisis in the country, which experts blame on rampant corruption, clientelism and incompetence, already sparked an uprising in 2019.
The arrival of the pandemic only accelerated the problems, before one of the world’s largest non-nuclear explosions blew up swathes of the capital last August.
The government resigned shortly after but over a year later the ruling political elite has yet to agree on the makeup of a new cabinet leaving Lebanon rudderless during its collapse.
With vanishing foreign reserves the caretaker authorities have had to slash subsidies like those on fuel, which initially sparked hoarding and crippling shortages and has seen prices rise by 66 per cent.
And so amid the misery citizens are struggling to get through the day and many have relied on help from abroad.
Cripplingly expensive cancer medications are in such short supply patients and family members have called for a sit-in outside of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia building in Beirut.
“Until now three of the cancer patients we have supported have died after they hadn’t been able to get treatment for a month and a half,” said Hany Nassar of the Barbara Nassar Association for Cancer Patient Support, which called the protest.
The organisation, founded in memory of Nasser’s wife who passed away from cancer in 2014, helps cancer patients try to get access and pay for the medication which can cost $10,000 per cycle.
This is a massacre, we have thousands of cancer patients who will die if they don’t get treatment
Hany Nassar, Barbara Nassar Association for Cancer Patient Support
“This is a massacre, we have thousands of cancer patients in Lebanon who will die if they don’t get treatment,” he added.
Meanwhile across the border in neighbouring Syria and Iraq, the Norwegian Refugee Council warned that a water crisis and drought threatens 12 million there, and may see food production subsequently collapse.
Across the region, rising temperatures, record low levels of rainfall, and drought are depriving people of drinking and agricultural water, the group said on Monday.
It is also disrupting electricity as dams run out of water, which in turn impacts the operations of essential infrastructure including health facilities. Higher temperatures caused by climate change increase the risks and severity of droughts.
The statement added that in Syria at least 400 square kilometres of agricultural land risk total drought, while two dams in the north of the country, serving three million people with electricity, face imminent closure.
In Iraq, large swathes of farmland, fisheries, power production and drinking water sources have been depleted of water.
“The total collapse of water and food production for millions of Syrians and Iraqis is imminent,” said Carsten Hansen, NRC’s Regional Director.
“With hundreds of thousands of Iraqis still displaced and many more still fleeing for their lives in Syria, the unfolding water crisis will soon become an unprecedented catastrophe pushing more into displacement.”