Mobile Healthcare Services

Even before the world-wide pandemic, Lebanon had been struggling to serve the needs of its people, and the influx of refugees from Syria hadn’t made the situation any better. Before the war in Syria, many in Lebanon had gone to Syria for work, and when the tables turned, resentment and even hostility toward the refugees had heightened.

For a decade, Mercy-USA operated a mobile medical unit in the mountain valley of Wadi Khalid in the northern part of Lebanon. The population of this under-served area included Lebanese host families and Syrian refugee families living side by side with one thing in common: they all struggled mightily to make ends meet. Skyrocketing healthcare costs had been a major stressor on the poor in Lebanon.

The mobile medical unit traveled along the winding roads throughout the valley, offering free primary care to all who were there waiting at each stop. Whether it was for high blood pressure, an injury, or any number of childhood illnesses, the doctor and nurse on board were there to diagnose and provide treatment whenever possible to everyone, free of charge.

Patients reported that the mobile clinic not only saved them the high cost of a doctor visit, it also saved the expensive taxi fare into the city, the cost of medicine, and other associated expenses, which had made affording clothes for the children or buying food, for example, easier.