WHO says Lebanon’s fragile health system disrupted by casualties from pager attacks

Casualties caused by explosions in booby-trapped radios and pagers in Lebanon this week seriously disrupted its fragile health sector, the World Health Organization chief said on Thursday.

The UN health agency cited Lebanese health authorities’ toll that 37 people had been killed and more than 3,000 injured in the pager blasts that detonated in areas considered strongholds of the Hezbollah terror group.

“These events have seriously disrupted Lebanon’s already fragile health system,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus tells a press conference, adding that the global body had distributed blood supplies and trauma kits in the country.

“The whole health system came under immense pressure very, very quickly,” says WHO emergencies chief Mike Ryan at the same briefing.