Suleiman Haroun , President of the Syndicate of Private Hospitals in Lebanon, warned on Tuesday that private healthcare facilities are compelled to admit emergency cases only if the economic crisis and ailing conditions persist.
“In the upcoming stage, we will be obliged to receive emergency cases only, especially dialysis and chemotherapy patients, and other life-threatening cases,” Haroun said at a press conference.
“We will give officials a period of two to three weeks to set right the situation before moving to the next step,” he added, noting that “hospitals plan to shut down except for emergencies.”
Haroun pointed to a “dangerous shortage in medical supplies and equipment used to operate in cases of bone, brain, and heart diseases,” due to a devaluing currency, pointing to an inability to “replace or repair malfunction in hospital equipment like CT scans, X-Ray machines, etc..”
The Lebanese pound (Lira) lost 80 % of its value against the US dollar. It was pegged at a rate of about 1500 LL per US dollar but last week it traded at around 9500 LL to the US dollar .
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