Health crisis in Lebanon: a nurse testifies to the hemorrhage of caregivers
Audio 01:20
A nurse in the Covid intensive care unit at Rafic Hariri public hospital in Beirut.
© Noé Pignède / RFI
Text by: RFI Follow
4 min
In Lebanon, the economic and political crisis that is hitting the country is causing the departure of more and more Lebanese graduates, a brain drain that affects all sectors, and in particular hospitals.
In a year and a half 1,000 doctors would have left the land of the cedar.
That is 20% of the total number of doctors in Lebanon.
Same alarming finding among nurses.
Faced with the bleeding, the order of nurses declared a "state of emergency".
A Lebanese nurse on departure agreed to testify at the microphone of RFI.
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With our correspondent in Beirut,
Noé Pignède
After 26 years of career as a nurse in a renowned hospital in the Lebanese capital, Mireille has decided to pack her bags.
Next month, she will take off for France where she has found a position in a clinic.
A decision motivated by the deterioration of his family's standard of living.
“
Being an experienced nurse, I was getting over $ 2,000,
” she explains.
I had social security for my children, I had first class health insurance, I was fine.
Now we're getting $ 100.
We are afraid every day.
We wonder if we are going to wake up with electricity or not, with the Internet or not.
We're sick of this.
"
But what especially convinced Mireille, her husband and her two daughters to leave the country was the
explosion that devastated Beirut
on August 4 and left 200 dead.
That day, the nurse saw hundreds of injured marching through her operating room.
“
We were all asked to work a horrible night, a dark night, not a sleepless night,
” she says.
It was traumatic for life.
I'm not happy to leave, I feel forced to leave.
Of course I feel bitterness.
I'm not leaving to live life in pink, but I want to live in
psychological stability.
I am aware that integration is not going to be easy, but the future of the children is what matters
”
Her 15 and 18-year-old daughters are expected to join her in Paris at the end of the school year.
The older one hopes to be accepted into medical school and make a living away from Lebanon.
► Read also: Covid-19: the situation is becoming catastrophic in Lebanese hospitals
Lebanon, renowned for the quality of its care throughout the Middle East, today fears it will become a medical desert with the immigration of caregivers.
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Coronavirus
Health and medicine
Lebanon