Lubana Ismail had just fled her village in southern Lebanon with her husband and two children when she went into labour. She had swollen veins in her uterus and needed immediate medical supervision to give birth safely.
They searched for a hospital in Beirut or Sidon that would admit her, but all were full of the dead and wounded. “No hospital accepted me. We were turned away everywhere until my father suggested we go to Iraq,” she recounted.
Around 11,600 pregnant women remain in Lebanon, of whom around 4,000 are expected to deliver in the next three months, according to a flash appeal published by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in October.
Many of them are displaced and lack adequate shelter, nutrition and sanitation. Access to safe antenatal, post-natal, and paediatric care is increasingly difficult.
