Public hospitals unwell

Beirut University Hospital limping under accumulated deficit

July 28, 2011- The Rafik Hariri University Hospital (RHUH), the largest and most developed public hospital in the country, has put up with accumulated deficits since its opening in 2005. The hospital’s yearly budget is estimated at around $46 million, with around $23 million allocated for salaries and wages.

The hospital’s General Manager, Wassim Wazzan, said that the costs of services offered by the hospital exceeded the correspondent bills issued by the Ministry of Health. This urges the hospital to ask for more credits exceeding the preset financial limit, he said.

Meanwhile, the staff of the ‘Elias Hrawi Governmental Hospital’ in Zahleh called the MoH to “release the hospital’s outstanding funds”. They said the facility might be forced to close down. “More than 150 employees haven’t received their wages over the past three months,” the hospital’s staff claimed in a press statement.

The Minister of Public Health, Ali Hasan Khalil, has vowed to promote the services and equipments of public hospitals. He said that many governmental hospitals have exceeded their allocated budgets, and that some of them should be given a higher financial limit.

There are 22 governmental hospitals in the country, with a total of 1500 beds out of 13,000 beds for all hospitals (public and private). The total number of cases admitted to public hospitals in 2010 stood at 69,000.