Nurse Elie Msallem works in the emergency department of a hospital in Beirut. He was actually supposed to work at night – but at 4pm he got a message to come in straight away.
– When I arrived it was crazy. The hospital was already full and we had to start evacuating patients who were healthy enough.
The staff had long prepared and trained for a similar scenario. Lebanese hospitals have been doing that ever since the explosions in Beirut in 2020, and even more often since the war in Gaza broke out.
– But no matter how much you prepare, it is difficult to receive so many patients. Those who came in were covered in blood, people had lost their hands and several came in without eyes.
At the hospital, the stock of blood quickly ran out. He describes this as a stumbling block in the rescue work.
– We reached a critical point. You can’t do anything without blood.
Elie has worked in the emergency room for five years. He has never seen so many patients come in at the same time.
“We had to treat some out in the parking lot”
For twenty hours he worked without a break. Then he only had time to be at home for a few hours before there were notices of new explosions.
– After Tuesday, the hospital was completely full. There were already injuries everywhere and we had to treat some out in the parking lot. We had to come back to another day where we met people without eyes and people who screamed and suffered.
Elie and his colleagues were then completely exhausted. In the last 48 hours, they have had to amputate many hands and remove eyes from the more than 100 patients that the hospital received.
– We have to get used to a new reality with people without hands, he says.