The health crisis intensifies in Libya as resources dwindle

The gate of a closed department at Tripoli Central Hospital on July 18, 2016. Photography: Ismail Zitouni – Reuters

After failing to provide specialized care for his six-year-old daughter in Libya or to obtain a travel visa for her treatment abroad, Abdul Hakim Al-Shaybi bought a motor boat and set off with her last month across the Mediterranean.

After a two-and-a-half-hour journey from Sabratha in western Libya, the boat arrived at a European ship that was tasked with rescuing the migrants.

Al-Shaibi said in a call with Reuters that he raised a white flag facing the ship in a sign of peace. Al-Shaibi spoke by phone this week from the Italian city of Genoa, where his daughter, Sajida, who suffers from a rare blood disease, is undergoing medical examinations. He added that a friend of his told them that he had a sick girl with him.

The story quickly caught on social media as an example of the tragic repercussions of the collapse of the health system in Libya in the midst of a decline in security, a financial crisis, and a chronic shortage of health workers and medicine.

The problems have appeared more acute since the arrival of a United Nations-backed government in Tripoli in March with the aim of ending the armed conflict and political chaos that has plagued Libya for years. The government is gradually trying to strengthen its grip, but it still faces opposition from factions on the ground.

Al-Shaibi said that he decided to take the boat trip when he visited the Central Hospital in Tripoli earlier this year and found it in a miserable condition, which he described as a hundred times worse than it was. He added that the hospital did not have nursing staff in the evening, medicine or health care at all.

The hospital is currently in a sorry state due to frequent power and water outages, and it is severely lacking in resources.

Three months ago, the emergency room was closed after a nurse was shot and another was beaten. There are no longer vacant places in the hospital morgue for its workers to wait for permits to bury unidentified bodies. Of the 250 foreign nurses, only 40 remain, while Libyan nurses are afraid to work due to security threats.

Director General Mukhtar Al-Habbas told Reuters that we are currently only conducting emergency operations. He added that the hospital no longer has anesthesia, sterilization tools, and even gauze. He asked: How can we work then?

Harun Rashid, a World Health Organization official, said that this story is being repeated across Libya, and that about half of the 159 hospitals are closed or provide only weak services.

He added that before the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, Libya was among the best countries in the region in terms of health indicators, despite its excessive reliance on foreign doctors and nurses who received large salaries due to the country’s oil income. But about 80 percent of these workers left the country. This deprived medical facilities of the specialized care required in neonatal units or in treating the large number of people injured as a result of traffic accidents.

The World Health Organization says that endemic malaria cases have recently begun to appear in southern Libya. The organization expressed its fears about the resurgence of polio and the growing resistance to anti-HIV drugs due to patients being forced to use alternative medications as a result of the shortage of the medications they are accustomed to. In a country where drug overuse is widespread, there are no detoxification centers.

Political chaos, corruption, and financial pressure due to the sharp decline in oil resources have all led to the cessation of funding for medical facilities. Despite Libya’s latent wealth, foreign donors are slow in providing financing.

Rashid said that everyone says that Libya is a rich country and has frozen assets but no liquidity.

At the Tripoli Medical Center, the largest government hospital in the capital, metal donation boxes were placed at its entrance, and the shelves of the hospital pharmacy were empty of medicines. Muhammad Hanish, Director General of the Center, said that some of the hospital equipment has been stopped from working by contractors who have not yet received their dues, and the remaining members of the nursing staff are threatening to leave the Center due to non-payment of their salaries.

Muhammad Miloud Al-Sabouh, whose wife is being treated for a tumor, said that the treatment does not exist, adding that he buys it from pharmacies and sometimes he has to go to five or six pharmacies until he finds the medicine.

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