Minister of Public Health vows to secure comprehensive health coverage for all Lebanese || Newspapers (Arabic)

The Minister of Public Health, Dr. Ali Hassan Khalil, noted during the launch of the national primary health care strategy on January 18th that the Ministry is seriously working towards a project that will ensure comprehensive health care coverage for all Lebanese citizens. A reminder that the aforementioned strategy involves the cooperation of the public sector, the NGOs sector and the military medical services thus making available 170 health centres spreads all over the country.  For his part, the General Director of the Ministry of Public Health, Dr. Walid Ammar called for increasing the budgetary allocation in the health sector which currently does not exceed 6%.  Ammar also presented suggestion for improving the financing of primary health care services. He noted that the total spending on health is 12.3% out of the total GNP.  Some 60% of this proportion is paid directly by citizens according to the Ministry’s figures for 1998.
The National Strategy includes a number of components notably strengthening collaboration with the civil society sector, developing an appropriate law to organize the work of health sectors within municipalities and within non-governmental organization, ensuring quality of services and issuing a primary health care guide in addition to minimum standards to be adopted by health care standards including regulating quality of services and of personnel. In addition, the number of health care centres will be increased to 200 centers by the end of 2013 thus reaching a ratio of one center per 15,000 or 30,000 citizens.
(Source: Annahar and Assafir 19 January 2013)