BMC health services research title: the 2020 blast in the port of Beirut: can the Lebanese health system “build back better”?

Abstract

[...]the decade-long Syrian conflict created a mass exodus of people seeking refuge, and Lebanon opened its northern border and accepted millions of refugees fleeing violence. [...]Lebanon currently has the world’s highest ratio of refugees to population, meaning that currently 1 in 4 people who live in Lebanon are refugees. According to the World Health Organization, following the catastrophic blast, more than half of the health facilities in Beirut were damaged and were ‘non-functional’ thereby limiting the supply of care to meet the spiking health care needs [14]. Given the surge in demand, the functional hospitals used a 2 months stock of medical supplies within days of the blast. [...]after the explosion, all the resources of the health care sector and that of the community were spontaneously mobilized to help with relief and construction efforts.