$ 6 million to allow hospitals to remain open in Lebanon
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Hashim Sheikh
- . September 7, 2021
- . Update: September 7, 2021 7:04 pm
On Monday, the Unite Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Lebanon announced the allocation of $ 6 million to allow hospitals, medical clinics, and medical dispensaries to remain open and functioning in an allied country for the next three months.
Lebanon faces economic collapse and now suffers from a chronic fuel shortage necessary for power generators and power plants. The UN humanitarian coordinator in Lebanon, Najaf Rochdi, announced in a statement, explaining that these 6 million US dollars aim to indirectly support hundreds of thousands of families deprived of medical assistance in a context of the absence of essential services in Lebanon in disarray.
These 6 million, says Ocha, are added to the ten already allocated in recent days by the UN to make up for the lack of water in various country regions, brought to its knees by its worst economic crisis in the last 30 years. The United Nations will not renew the budget allocated today at the end of the three months, explains Ocha, according to whom it is the responsibility of Lebanese rulers to find, with the support of the international community, sustainable ways to overcome the crisis.
Three-quarters of Lebanon population lives in poverty
In Lebanon, three-quarters of the population lives in poverty, according to the summary of the latest report by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) made known yesterday in Beirut, where the high body of the United Nations is based.
ESCWA thus updated the estimate of widespread poverty in Lebanon (74% of the population) concerning the UN indications of the previous months, which indicated that more than half of the population lived in poverty. Lebanon has been experiencing its most severe economic crisis since 2019, which manifested itself well before the pandemic and aggravated, however, by the consequences of the spread of covid and regional turbulence.
“Poverty in Lebanon has increased dramatically over the past year, now affecting around 74% of the population,” the humanitarian agency revealed in a report entitled “Multidimensional Poverty in Lebanon: A Painful Reality and Uncertain Prospects.” Taking into account factors other than income, including access to health care, education, and public services, brings the rate to 82% of the population living in multidimensional poverty, the organization says. A figure that almost doubled between 2019 and 2021.
