BEIRUT (AP) — Lebanon’s crisis-battered health care system is now preparing for the possibility of a devastating wider conflict with Israel, the country’s health minister told The Associated Press in an interview Monday. Israel's military and Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah militant group have traded strikes since the current war in Gaza began, but tensions have escalated since an Israeli strike in a Beirut suburb killed a top Hezbollah commander last month. Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate.
Lebanon’s caretaker government, amid diplomatic maneuvering for de-escalation, is trying to prepare for the worst with a tattered budget, a deeply divided parliament and no president. “The Lebanese health system had to adjust to multiple crises,” caretaker Health Minister Firas Abiad said. Health care facilities cut costs by keeping inventory at a minimum, leaving little backup for emergencies, he said.
Now inventory has been built up to four months' worth of critical supplies. “We hope that all the efforts we are doing for preparing for this emergency go to waste" and a wider war is averted, Abiad said. "The best thing that we want is for all of this to turn out to be unnecessary.
” Inside Gaza, the health system has been decimated. Abiad said Lebanese health authorities take the possibility of hospitals being targeted in a wider conflict “very seriously.” Already, he said, almost two dozen paramedics and health care workers in southern Lebanon have been killed in Israe.