10 August 2006
BEIRUT: The parking lot between Concorde and Verdun used to be filled with Mercedes and Hummers to some, evidence of Lebanon's burgeoning post-war economy. But over the course of the nearly month-old conflict, the flashy cars have gradually disappeared, making way for over a dozen military tents to house the 100-plus staff of the Jordanian-Lebanese mobile hospital.
On July 28, the Jordanian government was the first Arab country to staff, supply, and operate a mobile medical facility from Beirut to assist overextended Lebanese hospitals, which are struggling to accommodate a flood of patients under the restrictive Israeli blockade.
Over the past week the Saudi Arabian Red Crescent Society and the Egyptian military have also set up temporary facilities offering all manner of free medical treatment for problems ranging from psychological trauma, surgery and shrapnel wounds to gynecology, dentistry and the common cold. Though none of the three facilities require patients to disclose their origins, the majority are believed to be displaced victims of the Israeli bombardment.
Dr. Amr, a military surgeon from Egypt, said about 1,000 to 1,200 patients per day come to his facility and the number continues to rise steadily. They continue to receive shipments of medical supplies three times per week by plane, though he said the most common psychological ailments, such as incontinence in children and teenagers, cannot be treated with medicine alone.
"Yesterday a mother brought in her little boy with a leg wound after half of their apartment building collapsed from a bomb attack while they were still in it," he told The Daily Star from the hospital's makeshift office in the university library.
"They survived miraculously and I was able to treat his leg, but he can't control his bodily functions and is having nightmares. We can give anti-psychotics to help him sleep, but that's all."
Some of his youngest patients are too young for such strong medication, like the 2-year-old little girl he saw Monday who was covered in shrapnel wounds and had just watched her mother die. She remained calm during the day, Amr reports, and told him everything was okay because her mother was "in paradise now." At night she continues to wail and cannot sleep.
The volunteer doctors at the Egyptian mobile hospital have also performed minor operations, operating an out-patient clinic until 3 p.m. daily and a 24-hour emergency room. Yesterday Amr even delivered a baby through C-section.
The Jordanian mobile hospital occupies one building of a high school, whose other half is occupied by displaced residents of the South. About 25 cots are spread between the seven classrooms-cum-operating rooms, now occupied by a dental room, two surgical facilities, an intensive care unit and three emergency rooms.
According to the head of the medical team, Dr. Farhan, the 16 doctors and 18 nurses are able to treat about 750 to 800 patients daily double the amount they had planned for as long as medical supplies continue to arrive on time.
