Lebanon (Bekaa) Life Center

The Background

Since the Syrian Civil War crisis began in 2011, an estimated 5.6 million of its residents fled to neighboring countries such as Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Iraq to live in refugee camps or informal settlements. Approximately 1.5 million refugees have settled in Lebanon alone, which only had 4 million people to begin with.  In addition, many Iraqis fled their country into Lebanon since 2014 when ISIS began a brutal sectarian war that engulfed the country. The humanitarian and medical needs of the refugees have overwhelmed the already poor healthcare systems in these countries. 

Throughout the war crisis, the levels of funding from international donors were below the amounts required to meet the health needs of the refugees. Primary care had been partly subsidized by various NGOs, but this funding steadily has decreased year by year as the crisis prolongs.  Day by day, refugees are depleting their savings and the healthcare and overall humanitarian crisis increases by the day.

Since the beginning of our Life Centers, Lebanon faced a series of major crises. Lebanon is the 3rd most indebted country in the world and it was facing default in late 2019 when it was running out of foreign currency. The currency was drastically devalued and the banking system was nearly paralyzed. The country erupted in mass civil protests against the government’s poor handling of the crisis and the government was forced to resign.

Then the next crisis happened. In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic led to lockdowns and restrictions which caused severe hardship for the entire country. Many medical clinics near our Beirut LC closed during the economic crisis so our LC was given special governmental permission to continue operating despite the lockdowns. The North Lebanon LC had to suspend operations for about 3 months until the local government gave special permission to re-open.