Lebanon

Basic surveillance continuity, rather than sophisticated One Health integration, is the realistic current priority given the severe strain on the country's public health institutions.

Chronic disease disruption from interrupted care access, active conflict-driven trauma care needs, and severe economic-crisis-linked medicine shortages represent overlapping acute challenges.

Lebanon's historically strong private hospital sector has been severely strained by economic collapse, currency devaluation, and sustained health workforce emigration.

Waste management collapse in and around Beirut, combined with unreliable electricity affecting water treatment and refrigeration of medical supplies, are acute environmental health concerns.

Formal veterinary infrastructure has been significantly weakened alongside the broader public sector collapse, with minimal active surveillance capacity remaining outside select urban areas.

Coastal pollution and worsening water scarcity compound the health system's existing capacity constraints, with little institutional bandwidth currently available for climate adaptation planning.

National surveillance capacity has been significantly degraded by the sustained economic and political crisis, relying heavily on international technical support to maintain basic function.

Basic health system stabilization, including securing medicine supply chains and retaining remaining health workforce, is the dominant and urgent current priority.

Lebanon is heavily dependent on humanitarian and emergency health financing, with traditional development assistance financing structures poorly matched to the sustained crisis conditions.

The World Health Organization, UNHCR, the World Bank, and a range of international NGOs maintain emergency and stabilization-focused health programs.

Health workforce retention is the most urgent and structurally difficult implementation gap, as continued emigration of trained doctors and nurses threatens the system's basic functional capacity.

Lebanon's health system crisis is fundamentally an economic and governance crisis wearing health system clothing. Durable improvement requires financing structures built for sustained instability, not the episodic emergency response model most humanitarian financing still assumes.