LETTER FROM BEIRUT
In Jal el-Dib, a suburb of Beirut, the madness of the world has engulfed the world of madmen. The Hospital of the Cross, the main psychiatric asylum in Lebanon, is struck by the economic cataclysm which ravages the country of the Cedars. The free fall of the national currency, the Lebanese pound, which has lost 80% of its value, coupled with the soaring price of basic foodstuffs, of the order of 120% over one year, has emptied the coffers of this institution.
Housed in a vast park, a haven of calm on the heights of the Lebanese capital, the hospital falters under the blows of the crisis. “We have enough to feed the sick for another month and a half, sighs the director, Sister Jeannette Abou Abdallah. After that, we will count on providence. “ The establishment was opened in 1951 by the Capuchin monk Jacques Haddad (1875-1954), known as Abouna Yaacoub, famous defender of the underprivileged. It is installed on the site of a former convent of the Franciscans of the Cross of Lebanon, a congregation founded by Brother Jacques.
At the time, the main place of reception for the mentally ill was the Asfourié hospital in Beirut, created in 1900 by a Swiss Quaker missionary. But the place, repeatedly bombed during the civil war and beset by financial difficulties, had to close its doors in 1982. In the years that followed, several other hospitals were equipped with a psychiatric service. But none has acquired the importance of the establishment managed by the Franciscans, the only one entirely devoted to the treatment of these pathologies. With 1,000 beds and 376 employees, it is a very large structure that is now on the razor’s edge.
“No other place can contain all this suffering”
The majority of the 880 patients, from poor families, are supported by the Ministry of Health, at the rate of 40,000 pounds per day per person. This sum, supposed to cover the purchase of food and medicine and the salary of medical staff, represented 22 euros before the crisis. But with the brutal devaluation of the currency, it is now equal to 4 euros, a misery.
“I’m afraid that one day we won’t have anything to feed our patients, quivers Sister Mary Youssef, the general secretary of the Hospital of the Cross. I am haunted by this idea. What will we do then? We cannot send these people home. Some are too dangerous. Others have been rejected by their families who consider them a shame. We even have the case of a man who was declared dead by his father. No other place can contain all of this suffering. “
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