It is internationally recognized that primary health care aims at ensuring the highest possible level of health with affordable costs while focusing on people’s needs and preferences.
During the past two years, times of Covid 19 and economic crisis in Lebanon, Primary health care centers played a fundamental and pivotal role in responding to diverse health situations and needs. They helped to ease the burdens placed on the Lebanese public and private hospitals.
The major primary health care centers in the country ensure that people receive comprehensive care, with different services ranging from counseling and prevention to treatment, rehabilitation, and palliative care.
Order of Malta Lebanon: A Leader in Primary Healthcare
The Order of Malta, with 60 years mission at the service of dignity for the most vulnerable in Lebanon, is one of the major primary health care providers in the country.
The Order of Malta Lebanon works in close cooperation with various key actors of the health sector, their activities fall within the framework of the national strategic health program and are part of the health policies established by the World Health Organization and the Ministry of Public Health.
In 1957, the Order’s first Community Health Center was inaugurated in Zouk by former President of the Lebanese Republic Camille Chamoun. Today, they have expanded their scope of action and reach through eleven community health care centers distributed across the various Lebanese governorates.
The Community Health Center, Chiyah – Ain El Remmaneh
While the health sector is collapsing in Lebanon, the Order of Malta keeps working to provide health for everyone, helping people, and giving the best quality in service.
A year ago, they undertook the mission of renovating one of their main centers, located in Chiyah – Ain el Remmaneh, known as “St John Baptist,” community health center. Built in 1989, with 33 years of commitment to the community the center is known for its excellence in their services, and respect for the dignity of all patients where everyone is welcome, regardless of race, color and religion.
While the renovation process took place in only one year, the provided services never stopped. In the old center, the center received around 80 patients a day. In the middle of the crisis and during the restauration works, the team was relocated to the nearby church while they received up to 300 patients a day.
The Center offers all medical specialties free of charge or at a symbolic fee like general medicine, cardiology, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, ophthalmology, orthopedics, nephrology, urology, gastroenterology, endocrinology, dermatology, ENT, nutrition.
In addition, the center includes the central drugstore warehouse through which medicines are distributed to the Order’s various centers.
The Wait is Over
The renovated Community Health Center, also known as St John Baptist Center, will soon be reopening its doors.
Under the supervision of the Order of Malta medical committee, the Order of Malta center in Ain el Remmaneh – Chiyah, is the state-of-the-art of the Order of Malta Lebanon, and with its expansion, it will become the biggest center of the Order of Malta Lebanon and one of the biggest centers offering primary healthcare services near Beirut.
The center is expected to receive around 500 patients a day starting 11th of April 2022.
The Opening Event
On the 1st of April 2022, the Inauguration ceremony will be held, starting with the Blessing of the Center, in the presence of the Lebanese Minister of Public Health, deputies from the German Parliament, as well as representatives of The Federal German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, the main donor of this renovation project supported by Malteser International.
The German delegation will be visiting Lebanon from the 31st of March till the 2nd of April, exclusively for this event.
As well as key religious and social figures of Beirut and Chiyah and Ain El Remmaneh area.