As a physician treating Lebanon’s youngest cancer patients, Peter Noun always tries to remain positive. The tagline on the website of Kids First, the association he co-founded in 2005 to support children with cancer, is one of hope — “We Cancervive.” Now, however, with Lebanon’s health care system crumbling, seeing the best in things is not so easy. Stocks of medicines and equipment are running dry, highly skilled doctors and nurses are fleeing the country at record rates and health i

BEIRUT — In the midst of Lebanon’s economic collapse and faced with soaring inflation, women and girls are being forced to change the way they manage their periods, a new UN study has found. “Many families are having to adopt new coping strategies,” said Chaza Akik, a public health research professor at the American University of Beirut, who presented the study commissioned by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) at a virtual conference Friday. Seventy-seven women and girls from vulner

BEIRUT — For nearly a year, Khaled and his two young daughters have been without a home, after he lost his job as a tutor and was unable to keep up with rent payments. Since then, the small Syrian refugee family has been bouncing between friends and family across the country, spending a few nights at a time in any given location before moving on. “We are really struggling — we are essentially homeless,” he told L’Orient Today. “Our loved ones are looking out for us, but many of them are in a d

BEIRUT — In the courtyard of a one-story concrete building in the Beirut neighborhood of Hay al-Gharbeh, a handful of people wait patiently behind an iron door to be handed medications or invited in for a consultation. Written on a piece of paper attached to the bars are the words: “Do not put your hands or face on the door.” This is the Tahaddi medical center in the time of COVID-19. The small clinic provides free consultations and services to some 500 people every month. The community it se

In the highest forests of the Lebanese mountains, the dark green leaves of the legendary Cedrus libani fan out as far as the eye can see. These cedar trees, the unmistakable triangular shape of which takes pride of place on Lebanon’s flag, are under threat as bushfires tear through some of the country’s most remote areas. A 2014 model created by a team from the Land and Natural Resources programme at Balamand University projected that in 2020, climatic shifts and vulnerabilities would put fore

In the moments after an apocalyptic explosion ripped through the Lebanese capital on Tuesday evening, it was difficult to understand what had just happened. I stood with my neighbors in the parking lot of my building in the south-east of the city, ears ringing, trying to work out where the cloud of bright red smoke was coming from. All around us lay shards of shattered glass that had fallen from nearby buildings. Our windows, by some miracle, had been left intact. For many of the 2.2 million Be