MARJAYOUN: From his office overlooking the border with Israel, Dr Mounes Klakesh can hear the thump of artillery rounds and air strikes landing on nearby Lebanese towns. The increasing frequency of those strikes has the staff of his small hospital on edge.

“We’ve already had to treat 51 people wounded by explosions in the last month or so. Seventeen of those died, or arrived dead. More than that and wed be overwhelmed, Klakesh said.

Klakesh, director of the Marjayoun Hospital in southern Lebanon, said it serves nearly 300,000 people in the area. It has 14 emergency beds and struggles to operate because of a lack of staff and, crucially, lack of fuel.

The hospital runs on generators 20 hours a day and has to pay up to $20,000 a month for the fuel. None of that money comes from the government anymore. We rely on what funds the hospital has from one week to the next, Klakesh said. If the fuel runs out, the hospital closes. We can’t just switch off part of the hospital.

Dozens more public hospitals are in a similarly precarious state. Lebanon’s economic collapse in 2019 left them barely able to cope in peacetime.

Now, an escalating situation on the southern border with Israel is pushing the healthcare sector into a new crisis. Doctors worry the latest Middle East crisis could stretch it beyond breaking point.

The hilltop hospital in Marjayoun has had its share of worse humanitarian crises. Doctors evacuated patients under Israeli air strikes during Israel’s 2006 invasion in which hundreds died. In the 1980s another Israeli invasion cut south Lebanon off from the rest of the country.

But this time, Klakesh and doctors in other hospitals say they are ill-equipped to handle any more than current levels of violence, let alone another major unrest.

Published in Dawn, November 16th, 2023