Beirut classrooms become clinics

By Martin Patience
BBC News, Beirut

Over 85,000 refugees are staying in Beirut's public schools

As a team of doctors wiped down school desks with pungent disinfectant, a group of women with babies in their arms jostled at the classroom door.

"Just wait a minute," one of the doctors called to the mothers as he carried a brown box of pharmaceuticals over to the window sill.

With Arabic grammar scrawled on the blackboard this does not look like a doctor's clinic - but that is what it is.

Lebanon's social services are overwhelmed after up to a million Lebanese fled from their homes in the south of country and Beirut's southern suburbs as the Israeli bombardment of these areas continue.

Over 85,000 of these people are staying in public schools in Beirut. There are power cuts and water shortages in many of the buildings. Often 20 people or more are sleeping in the same classroom.

'Stress of war'

But for some of the refugees the biggest worry is lack of access to medical care in hospitals and clinics in the city.

In Beirut, a team of about 50 doctors, trainee doctors, pharmacists and nurses from the American University Hospital are volunteering to rounds of 12 local schools to help those most at need.

Dr Faysal Kak, a gynaecologist and co-ordinator of the programme, says that some of the patients are suffering ailments brought on by the stress of war.

Dr Kak says the crisis has taught him a lot about the Lebanese

"We would expect to see people suffering from ulcers, diarrhoea, skin rashes, anxiety attacks and suffering," he said, before remonstrating a man for wandering into the classroom with a lit cigarette.

Other patients at the Zihaya Kudra secondary school are suffering from pre-existing problems such as heart or breathing problems, says Dr Kak, but their conditions have been exacerbated by their living conditions.

These serious cases are often referred to the hospital.

Inside the classroom, three green mattresses were laid beside the blackboard to be used for examinations. Over 20 boxes with syringes and other medical equipment and pharmaceuticals sit on the desks.

'Strong, dynamic country'

Doctors work briskly with their patients. One man was told that he had an ulcer and was given appropriate medicine. A woman brought in her young daughter for a check-up.

The young girl, with blonde tints in her hair, screamed as the doctor pulled up her T-shirt and placed the stethoscope on her stomach. She was given the all-clear.

Other classrooms across the city have been turned into clinics

"The [Lebanese] civil war has taught us many things and this country has a very active society," said Dr Kak, standing in the dingy corridor outside the classroom. "There is a very strong and dynamic country that is able to cope with emergencies like this."

To prove his point, in another classroom children from six months to nine years old are being vaccinated against measles and polio.

Around the corner, another team of doctors from the same hospital are treating patients living at the al-Huda school.

A young baby is sprawled on a mattress placed on a table as a doctor checks her ears with a small torch.

Outside the sweltering classroom, Ghassan Talib, 31, has just had a check-up for a sore throat.

He praises the doctors for doing a great job by coming to the school. Mr Talib is also happy that his sore throat is nothing serious. It probably has something to do with the three packets of cigarettes he smokes daily.

"But the situation makes me smoke more," he said.