The idea to create a specialized center for the treatment and follow-up of childhood chronic diseases (CCC) materialized in 1994, as an answer to the urgent needs expressed by the medical community and the patients’ families.
The Chronic Care Center is a medico-social institution, specialized in the treatment and follow-up of children with Diabetes and Thalassemia. It the first philanthropic medical institution of its kind in Lebanon and the Middle East. Founded in 1992. The Center aims at maximizing quality of health care and social support for those children.
Through its multi-disciplinary team of doctors and other experts, the Center ensures optimal therapeutic control and a medical follow-up to its patients. The Center also helps families to understand the diseases, and consequently, assume their share of responsibility.
Lebanon Today
For twenty-eight years after the end of the civil war, Lebanon saw an era of rehabilitation and reconstruction, only to be followed by a complete financial, economic, social, medical, cultural and educational disaster that was first publicly expressed in October 2019. Growth and stability suddenly turned into a social and economic nightmare plunging an entire population into a never-ending abyss of darkness and poverty.
Today Lebanon is the third highest indebted country in the world. Based on the ESCWA 2021 report, the poverty rate is 82% (rising from 28% in 2019). The UN reported in 2021 that 82% of the Lebanese population lives in extreme poverty. In addition to its indigenous population of 4 million, Lebanon has been home to more than 2 million Syrian refugees who fled their country 12 years ago.
The Lebanese pound which was pegged to the US dollar at a fixed rate for more than two decades, lost more than 90% of its value in two years. The inflows of foreign currency remittances which were the mainstay of many families, were reduced significantly. Local banks imposed strict restrictions on cash withdrawals by their clients, making it impossible for even the wealthiest to withdraw the minimum amount needed to cover their most basic needs such as food, medicine and tuition. For the past three years, since the financial crisis started, the Lebanese people have been taken hostage by a failed and corrupted state.
With skyrocketing inflation approaching 178% and a 43% unemployment rate, over 200,000 Lebanese immigrated between 2019 and 2022 through October 2022) in search of economic opportunities abroad, decent living standards, and a dignified future for their families.
Like other professionals, many physicians, nurses and social workers had no other choice but to leave Lebanon in the face of this unprecedented total breakdown of public and private institutions. Hospitals and medical centers took a hard hit with the loss of an estimated 35% of their medical and nursing workforce after the Beirut Port blast on August 4th 2020. The Lebanese Order of Physicians stated that the number of doctors who left Lebanon from that time through the first half of 2022 reached 3,000 and the number of nurses neared 5,000. The impact of this mass exodus is real and has alarming implications on the current and future health of the Lebanese. The Chronic Care Center is no exception.
Lebanon Today
For twenty-eight years after the end of the civil war, Lebanon saw an era of rehabilitation and reconstruction, only to be followed by a complete financial, economic, social, medical, cultural and educational disaster that was first publicly expressed in October 2019. Growth and stability suddenly turned into a social and economic nightmare plunging an entire population into a never-ending abyss of darkness and poverty.
Today Lebanon is the third highest indebted country in the world. Based on the ESCWA 2021 report, the poverty rate is 82% (rising from 28% in 2019). The UN reported in 2021 that 82% of the Lebanese population lives in extreme poverty. In addition to its indigenous population of 4 million, Lebanon has been home to more than 2 million Syrian refugees who fled their country 12 years ago.
The Lebanese pound which was pegged to the US dollar at a fixed rate for more than two decades, lost more than 90% of its value in two years. The inflows of foreign currency remittances which were the mainstay of many families, were reduced significantly. Local banks imposed strict restrictions on cash withdrawals by their clients, making it impossible for even the wealthiest to withdraw the minimum amount needed to cover their most basic needs such as food, medicine and tuition. For the past three years, since the financial crisis started, the Lebanese people have been taken hostage by a failed and corrupted state.
With skyrocketing inflation approaching 178% and a 43% unemployment rate, over 200,000 Lebanese immigrated between 2019 and 2022 through October 2022) in search of economic opportunities abroad, decent living standards, and a dignified future for their families.
Like other professionals, many physicians, nurses and social workers had no other choice but to leave Lebanon in the face of this unprecedented total breakdown of public and private institutions. Hospitals and medical centers took a hard hit with the loss of an estimated 35% of their medical and nursing workforce after the Beirut Port blast on August 4th 2020. The Lebanese Order of Physicians stated that the number of doctors who left Lebanon from that time through the first half of 2022 reached 3,000 and the number of nurses neared 5,000. The impact of this mass exodus is real and has alarming implications on the current and future health of the Lebanese. The Chronic Care Center is no exception.
Effect On Children
Before the 2019 socio-economic and financial crises, medicine in Lebanon was subsidized by the government and was widely available. With the lifting of subsidies beginning in 2020 came severe restrictions on the availability of basic medicine in pharmacies with a shelf price increase of more than tenfold. Seemingly overnight, medicine became utterly unaffordable and inaccessible to most Lebanese.
For a country that depends on imports for most of its pharmaceutical and medical products, this came as a major blow to the patients, making it near impossible to obtain medicine and seek hospitalization. The current situation is unbearable, life-threatening and unimaginable. An entire population of all age groups with different medical conditions is now at risk of increased morbidity and mortality. The financial crisis caused by the Lebanese government, the Central Bank of Lebanon and the banking sector, left around six million Lebanese with no access to their own savings accounts.
Reduced access to medical care and inability to pay school tuition coupled with shortages in food, gas and fuel bear a heavy toll on many families.
Today, the children of the CCC are facing the threat of increased medical complications due to their chronic conditions. If not treated properly and in a timely manner, both conditions, diabetes and thalassemia have irreversible complications that could lead to premature and even sudden death.
The CCC is facing a drastic shortage of Insulin, Desferal, Deferiprone and Jadenu, all essential medicines used for the daily treatment of Type 1 Diabetes and Thalassemia.
In both conditions (Type 1 Diabetes and Thalassemia) the burden of the treatment requires close follow-up and monitoring by a multidisciplinary team of experts (medical, psychological, nurse educators and nutritionists) to support families and patients. Teaching them to accept their conditions, and assisting them in their continuous fight for improved health, well-being and social integration are as important as the treatment itself.
Effect On Children
Before the 2019 socio-economic and financial crises, medicine in Lebanon was subsidized by the government and was widely available. With the lifting of subsidies beginning in 2020 came severe restrictions on the availability of basic medicine in pharmacies with a shelf price increase of more than tenfold. Seemingly overnight, medicine became utterly unaffordable and inaccessible to most Lebanese.
For a country that depends on imports for most of its pharmaceutical and medical products, this came as a major blow to the patients, making it near impossible to obtain medicine and seek hospitalization. The current situation is unbearable, life-threatening and unimaginable. An entire population of all age groups with different medical conditions is now at risk of increased morbidity and mortality. The financial crisis caused by the Lebanese government, the Central Bank of Lebanon and the banking sector, left around six million Lebanese with no access to their own savings accounts.
Reduced access to medical care and inability to pay school tuition coupled with shortages in food, gas and fuel bear a heavy toll on many families.
Today, the children of the CCC are facing the threat of increased medical complications due to their chronic conditions. If not treated properly and in a timely manner, both conditions, diabetes and thalassemia have irreversible complications that could lead to premature and even sudden death.
The CCC is facing a drastic shortage of Insulin, Desferal, Deferiprone and Jadenu, all essential medicines used for the daily treatment of Type 1 Diabetes and Thalassemia.
In both conditions (Type 1 Diabetes and Thalassemia) the burden of the treatment requires close follow-up and monitoring by a multidisciplinary team of experts (medical, psychological, nurse educators and nutritionists) to support families and patients. Teaching them to accept their conditions, and assisting them in their continuous fight for improved health, well-being and social integration are as important as the treatment itself.
Success
The promise made in 1990 became reality in 1994. The CCC pumped life and hope in the hearts and souls of many children it has served throughout the years. In order to continue its mission, the CCC seeks the support of benefactors to help sustain those 3904 persons who started as sick children, and became healthy adolescents and adults. Generations of children graduated from the CCC and became fully integrated adults, well adjusted to living with their chronic but well controlled disease. They had the chance to be served by the only reference center in Lebanon and the region that treated them holistically and wholeheartedly. We ask you today to help sustain their lives, and those of newly afflicted children so they too can lead a normal life despite the extraordinary challenges facing them. Let us choose to favor life over death and hope over despair.
