Bringing clean water and sanitation services to forcibly displaced families in Lebanon

Country: Lebanon Source: Médecins Sans Frontières Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is supporting communities who have been forcibly displaced by Israeli bombardments and blanket evacuation orders across Lebanon. Through mobile clinics we are providing general healthcare, medications for non-communicable diseases, sexual and reproductive health services, and mental health support. Access to safe water and sanitation services remains one of the most essential pillars of health and dignity during displacement. Across Lebanon, MSF has been strengthening water and sanitation conditions in shelters to ensure people are able to keep themselves and their living spaces clean, manage waste, and protect their health, privacy and dignity. Maryam Srour, our communications manager in Lebanon, reflects on her time visiting families living in an abandoned hospital in Beirut that has turned into a temporary shelter. There, daily life is shaped by coping with displacement and difficult living conditions. I was here in October 2024, during the last escalation of war in Lebanon . At the time, MSF teams were repairing rundown pipes and toilets so that people who had taken refuge inside, many with additional needs, would have access to clean water and safe living conditions. I didn’t realise until I stepped into the building in March how much I had tried to forget it. Grey walls. Grey ceilings. Grey floors. The same scenes. The same struggles. I step into a space stripped of warmth and colour. Puddles of water litter the floors and corners. Rooms with gaping windows are patched over with bits of cloth and cardboard—anything to keep the inevitable cold and rain at bay. And the sounds. The sounds of water dripping and people coughing greet me through the dilapidated corridors. This building was once the site of one of the most advanced hospitals in Beirut. My mother tells me it was home to the first MRI machine in the city. My grandmother even sought care here once in 1990. After years of civil unrest, it was abandoned, left to decay. A building that once represented medical care and recovery, now depicts something else entirely. A collective shelter, home to nearly 400 people. Mothers. Elderly people. Patients on dialysis and cancer treatment. Families from different walks of life, brought together by displacement. No toilets. No running water. I am here with MSF. Our mobile clinics and different teams visit shelters like this one, responding to the mountain of needs people face. My colleague, Mohammad Dandash, MSF logistics manager, walks me through the 12-storey building. MSF worked here during the 2024 escalation, clearing grey water and repairing toilets for people with disabilities or additional needs. Following the ceasefire, families returned home. Mothers. Elderly people. Patients on dialysis and cancer treatment. Families from different walks of life, brought together by displacement.Maryam Srour, MSF communications manager in Lebanon Share this Sixteen months later, with intensified Israeli bombardment and widespread evacuation orders , more than one million people in Lebanon have been forced from their homes – some for the second or third time. From floor to floor The basement is a no-go zone, marred by decades of waste and stagnant water. On the staircase, an elderly man passes by carrying empty jerrycans. Mohammad tells me that soon this daily climb – up and down, repeatedly – will no longer be necessary. MSF teams have installed 15,000-litre water tanks and are working to restore the piping system to bring clean, reliable water into the building. We reach the third-floor landing, the grey around me is interrupted by bright bits of clothes hung to dry on lines of rope, and a beige door every few metres. The light is dim, but there are signs of life here. A crooked wheelchair sits idly by a door, its owner nowhere to be seen. And then, a woman greets me with a smile. “We have a newborn on this floor. Would you like to see her?” I return the smile, instinctively, even as something tightens in my chest at the thought of a newborn in a place with the constant sound of dripping water. I follow her into a room marked ‘302’, and my heart sinks. Little Nour lies wrapped in pink. She was born on 16 March, on a night when Israeli airstrikes pounded her former neighbourhood. Her mother remembers the sound of relentless bombardment as she went into labour. A week earlier, the family had fled their home in Beirut’s southern suburbs and taken refuge in this room with a framed opening. A piece of cloth, now a substitute for glass, is attempting to block the wind and rain. Mattresses are stacked in the corner. A worn rug marks the space where shoes must come off. Her mother is warm and welcoming. “I keep sanitising and cleaning,” she tells me. “I’m almost obsessive about it. She’s so young, and I don’t want her to catch anything.” Across the hall, Ali, 10 years old, and Abbas, five years old, play quietly. Both were born with cogn

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