Doctors Without Borders to Reduce Health Services in Bar Elias Hospital: What’s Next for the Region?

Ragana Diet wrote in “The News”:

Last week, Doctors Without Borders informed those concerned in the Ministry of Public Health that it would reduce its health services this month in Bar Elias Hospital, in preparation for handing it over to the Ministry early next month after six years of work. The decision was taken by the main office in Brussels and is irreversible, according to sources in the organization.

The former head of the Parliamentary Health Committee, Assem Araji, indicated that the organization is in the process of working on a “new project” in the region, expressing his fear that this project will not be medical, after the organization paid compensation to 90% of the working staff, including doctors, nurses and administrators. Pointing out that what the region needs is a hospital or any other medical project, “not cultural or social projects,” as Bar Elias is the center of a number of neighboring villages, and “its residents are mostly poor and public sector employees, in addition to a large number of displaced Syrians.” Bar Elias alone includes about 130,000 Lebanese and Syrians, bearing in mind that medical services and surgical operations in the hospital were free, which made it intended for most residents in the Bekaa regions, even remote ones, and in six years, 6,000 surgeries were performed there. And the hospital was “the first in the region to open a Corona department.”

Six years ago, the Ministry of Health and Doctors Without Borders signed an agreement for five years, subject to renewal, during which the organization will run the hospital, which it has worked to restore and equip with equipment that has turned it into a “model hospital,” of about 50 beds with full services, and no one works in it. There are less than 150 workers, including doctors, nurses, and administrators, who receive their salaries in dollars, bearing in mind that the hospital was built before the war from donations from the people of the region to serve as a health center, but it never worked.
After the war, the Ministry of Health took over and equipped a section of it as a medical clinic, along with a center for the Ministry of Culture and another for the municipality. With the influx of displaced Syrians in 2011, it turned into a shelter center before the ministry and the organization signed a five-year agreement that ended in May last year, and was renewed for one year only. Since the end of last year, “Doctors Without Borders” began to reduce services and closed the surgery department, before the last communication came to hand over the hospital to the Ministry of Health. It is a decision that many, even the ministry itself, are apprehensive about in light of the current circumstances, and raises questions about its ability to take over the management of the hospital and secure its operational cost, in light of the current inability to support government hospitals.