Lebanese healthcare system preparing for a wider war with Israel, minister says

Lebanon’s crisis-battered healthcare system is now preparing for the possibility of a wider conflict with Israel, the country’s health minister tells The Associated Press in an interview Monday.

Inventory has been built up to four months’ worth of critical supplies, Lebanese Health Minister Firas Abiad says, adding, “We hope that all the efforts we are doing for preparing for this emergency go to waste” and a wider war is averted.

“The best thing that we want is for all of this to turn out to be unnecessary,” he says.

Since October 8, Hezbollah-led forces have attacked Israeli communities and military posts along the northern border with Lebanon on a near-daily basis, with the group saying it is doing so to support Gaza amid the war there.

The region is currently braced for escalation as Israel girds for threatened major attacks from Iran and its proxy Hezbollah for the killings of terror chiefs in Beirut and Tehran last month.

Abiad says that Lebanese health authorities take the possibility of hospitals being targeted in a wider conflict “very seriously.”

Lebanon’s health sector was once renowned as one of the best in the region. But the country has has faced compounding crises since 2019, including a fiscal one that followed decades of corruption and mismanagement. Other challenges include the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 Beirut Port explosion that damaged or destroyed key healthcare infrastructure and dwindling international aid to help Lebanon host more than 1 million Syrian refugees.