Beirut / Tyre – The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) held a three-day course from 3 to 5 November 2015 on the management of emergency-room trauma at the Ragheb Harb hospital run by the Iranian Red Crescent Society (IRCS) in Lebanon's southern city of Nabatiyeh.
The course was attended by 20 participants, including doctors and nurses from the IRCS and Bint Jbeil Salah Ghandour hospitals as well as from the Human Call hospital in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ein el-Helweh in Saida.
"We organize such courses to support local health personnel in their efforts to provide emergency treatment for wounded patients," said the ICRC's health coordinator in Lebanon, Rodolfo Rossi, "Treating weapon-inflicted injuries requires specific skills and local health specialists must be ready to deal with emergencies, particularly in this region."
It is the second course of its kind held by the ICRC in cooperation with the IRCS. The first one took place last year.
"This course is unique thanks to the experience and valuable medical knowledge the ICRC is sharing with our hospital," said the general manager of the IRCS Ragheb Harb hospital, Dr Adel Maghsoudi Nejad. "This knowledge is essential to improve the management of trauma patients and to increase their chances of survival."
An emergency-room nurse from the Human Call hospital, Ahmad Al Zeeb, said the course was very valuable for him: "The course gave me knowledge I did not have before, especially in what to do first for trauma patients. I will use it a lot because in Ein el-Helweh we unfortunately have many such patients.. It is good to be trained alongside doctors because in emergencies we often have to work alone, which requires a higher level of responsibility than usual."
The ICRC runs an extensive health programme in Lebanon, supporting primary health care facilities, strengthening casualty chains and providing treatment for the weapon-wounded. In 2014, the ICRC established a weapon traumatology and training centre in Tripoli. Together with the Faculty of Medical Sciences of the Lebanese University, it is launching in November 2015 a new academic module in the clinical management of the weapon-wounded. Last year, the ICRC donated a generator and equipment for the operation room at the IRCS hospital that was opened in June 2015.
For further information, please contact:
Tarek Wheibi, ICRC Beirut, tel: +961 70 153 928
Soaade Messoudi, ICRC Beirut, tel: +961 71 802876
