GENEVA, Sept 19 (Askume) – The World Health Organization’s director-general said on Thursday that explosions that ripped through radios and pagers in Lebanon this week had dealt a serious blow to the country’s fragile health sector.
The UN health agency quoted Lebanese health officials as saying that the bomb blast killed 37 people and injured more than 3,000 in an area considered a stronghold of the anti-Israel militant group Hezbollah.
“These incidents have severely strained Lebanon’s already fragile health system,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news conference. He said the global organisation had delivered blood supplies and trauma kits to the country.
“The entire health system was immediately under enormous pressure,” WHO emergencies chief Mike Ryan said at the same press conference.
Dr. Abdinasir Abubakar, the WHO representative in Lebanon, said 100 hospitals were involved in the response. He said several exercises were carried out before the attack and emergency supplies were stockpiled to help doctors and nurses prepare in advance and limit casualties.
At the same press conference, Tedros said MPO cases are rising in Africa, and the WHO plans to send 33 tonnes of supplies on Friday to the worst-affected country, the Democratic Republic of Congo, for testing, treatment and prevention.
He said he was encouraged by the decline in Guinea worm cases worldwide. “We now have an opportunity to make Guinea worm the second human disease to be eradicated,” he said, citing the eradication of smallpox in the 1980s.
