By Ayman Muftah.
Benghazi, 16 June 2017:
A lack of staffing and of medical equipment and medicine are the main difficulties facing the hospitals and clinics in the greater Benghazi area, participants at a conference on the problems facing the healthcare industry in area agreed yesterday.
Local mayors and hospital and clinic managers had been summoned to a workshop by the Beida-based heath minister Reida El-Oakley in an attempt to try and thrash out some solutions to the many challenges facing the health industry in the city and the surrounding region. The prime need is to reopen hospitals, clinics and health centres closed or damaged as a result of three years of fighting.
Several major Benghazi hospitals still remain closed, and health care workers, Libyan and foreign alike, have not yet returned. There are also issues about salary payments.
Those attending included the deputy health minister, Benghazi acting mayor Abdelrahman Elabbar, the mayors of Gemenis and Al-Abyar representatives of Benghazi municipality, managers of of hospital and health facilities, and the directors of the health services department and of the Benghazi’s medical supply department.
