HEALTH
Medical Aid delivery to Haifa Hospital
The supplies help the hospital serving one of the most vulnerable populations in the Beirut area prepare for coronavirus patients.
Anera recently provided Haifa Hospital in Burj El Barajneh Palestinian Refugee Camp in Lebanon with medical supplies generously donated by Direct Relief. Anera renovated the emergency unit at Haifa Hospital last year.
The medical supplies include sutures, syringes, N95 masks, and blood collection needles. We are distributing these medical supplies to Palestinian Red Crescent Society hospitals and medical clinics across Lebanon to help health care providers with essential protective equipment as they work to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.
Fortunately, there are no known COVID-19 cases in Haifa Hospital yet, but staff are taking all the precautions they can to prepare, setting up an isolation and screening rooms for testing, and training all employees on how to deal with the expected influx of cases.
The hospital has stopped all non-emergency surgeries and procedures and established two primary rooms to isolate and test potential COVID-19 patients.
Jumana Sarhan is a nurse in the emergency department at Haifa Hospital. She says,
“We are not fully prepared for an influx of COVID-19 patients to the hospital. We are in a densely populated environment, which means we should be expecting a big inflow at any point in time."
Jumana says they are in “dire need” of personal hygiene and sterilization equipment, especially N-95 masks and gloves. Their normal supply has been depleted and has become difficult to restock as camp residents are buying much of the available supply of protective equipment at pharmacies.
Jamal Maarouf, another nurse at Haifa Hospital, says,
“The hospital was in dire need of several things even before the COVID-19 outbreak, as Lebanon's economic situation was crumbling after several decades operating within an already weak infrastructure. We were not prepared for this stage!
“We are still under-prepared while the whole world is facing a very difficult epidemic. We, as staff, need a lot more protective gear as do our patients: we need face masks and gloves, we need ventilators and hazmat suits — all preventive equipment.”
Jamal has every reason to believe it is only a matter of time until Haifa Hospital begins seeing coronavirus patients.
