The state of chaos and corruption in Lebanon has claimed a new victim, leaving a mother, Maria Moussa, grieving her precious 4-year-old daughter Mila.
Mila was a cancer patient suffering from leukemia. She was being treated at the Saint George Hospital University Medical Center until the Beirut Port explosion destroyed the center. Her treatment was then transferred to the Saint Joseph Medical Center in Achrafieh.
Following her most recent treatment, Mila suffered from a very high fever caused by an infection as the tests showed.
However, since her immune system was so weak due to chemotherapy, her condition quickly deteriorated. She was required to be transferred to a hospital with a pediatric intensive care unit.
Here is where things took an awful and fatal turn. Not a single hospital accepted to receive her.
According to her family, the initial excuse was that Social Security could not cover the expenses. However, the family insisted that money wasn’t an issue and could be secured. Yet the hospitals still rejected Mila, saying there were no beds.
Speaking to Annahar, the Moussa family said that they tried virtually every hospital in Lebanon, and the response was always the same: no beds.
It was only after resorting to mediation and extensive communications that Mila’s family was able to secure a bed in Karantina Governmental Hospital. However, by the time she was allowed in, it was too late. Mila had taken her last breath.
The hospitals’ collective refusal to take in a child patient, whose family had the funds necessary to afford urgent treatment, is extremely concerning and sparks many questions.
“We don’t know the real reason behind their refusal,” Moussa told Annahar. “No one has a conscience. No one tried to help us.”
As Health Minister Hamad Hasan celebrates his alleged victories, Lebanon’s medical sector is taking a deep dive to the worst with the pandemic, the economic crisis, and the lack of power supply and fuel.
Not only are hospital and medical resources depleting, but so is expertise. In the past year, over 1,000 doctors fled the country’s economic crisis to take on opportunities abroad.
Mila’s drama brings into question if Lebanon is heading to a place where hospitals get to decide who lives and who dies based on equipment and supplies they want to ration.
