'Like a Rolls Royce without fuel': Dollar-strapped Lebanon hospitals faced with closure
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Hospitals across Lebanon are experiencing serious funding problems as a consequence of the current crisis as unprecedented nationwide protests in the country enter their second month. Thousands flooded Lebanese cities once again on Sunday to call for change, but the beyond the streets, the turmoil is tangible in the country’s clinics and hospital wards. Private hospitals are now owed $1.3 billion in unpaid bills by the dollar-strapped state, doctors aren’t getting their monthly pay packets, labs are perilously short on supplies and the patients they treat can’t withdraw cash from their banks to pay their healthcare bills. Ten hospitals have already been forced to close their doors to cancer patients. FRANCE 24’s Nadia Massih and Mohamed Farhat filed this special report from a hospital in Tyre.