Minister of Health Firas Al-Abyad toured a number of hospitals in the north and held a press conference at the Governmental Hospital in Tripoli, in the presence of the Chairman of the Board, Dr. Fawaz Hallab, and the director of the hospital, Nasser Adra, the head of the North Doctors Syndicate, Salim Abi Saleh.
“The aim of this visit is to see closely the obstacles and difficulties facing health centers that provide services to citizens, to see if we are able to reduce the burden on them,” Abyad said.
He added: “Everyone knows that the ministry’s plan, which we announced in the ministerial statement, is to rely more on primary health care, and this helps to anticipate many of the diseases that we see and that reach hospitals, especially amid high drug prices and intolerance by many. Therefore, the Ministry is trying It is provided free of charge through primary health centers.
He touched on the topic of “children’s vaccines that are declining in Lebanon. This puts us at risk of returning some diseases that we thought we had gotten rid of, such as polio and others.”
He addressed the concerns of health workers in light of the deteriorating living situation, “and the failure to secure the requirements of living by the medical staff, which pushes many to emigrate, and negatively affects the health reality.” He pointed out that “the social assistance that public administration employees benefited from also included government hospital employees, as well as from the increase in transportation allowance,” stressing “the need for more support and benefits for workers, and this is what we hope to get following the budget is approved, because the new budget is in it.” A significant increase in the hospitalization clause, which enables us to raise the tariff and what the ministry pays to the hospitals, and thus hospitals can increase compensation for workers, and at the same time, the high tariff paid by the ministry allows the citizen to be forced to pay high differentials to hospitals to cover the necessary costs.
The White Minister revealed that the ministry is in the process of opening dialysis centers and securing full treatment for patients, with the need to raise the cost to secure and cover patients.
He stressed the ministry’s commitment to Tripoli Governmental Hospital, services and continuity, which means increasing the hospital’s financial ceiling as well as tariffs for services.
He hoped “to preserve the distinguished medical staff in Lebanon,” pointing to “the large exodus of doctors, including those who specialize in some services such as pediatric heart surgery and others, which have been greatly affected. Therefore, the increase includes increasing the fees charged by doctors and improving their conditions.”
He concluded: “We, as the Ministry of Health, have a clear and explicit position. We demand an increase in the budget available to the ministry, if it is for the purchase of medicines for incurable diseases and cancer medicines, and if it is for hospitalization.”
