Hospital a lifeline for embattled region

Set in a rugged corner of Lebanon just metres from Israel's armed, disputed border, the facility will be the first to introduce modern care.

The Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Hospital in Shebba Farms, Lebanon, is just 500 metres from the border with Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

SHEBBA FARMS, LEBANON // That there is a bomb shelter in the basement of the nearly completed Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Hospital could be considered unusual, until the lead engineer on the US$16 million (Dh58.7m) project, Issam Haydar, points to a radio antenna on a nearby mountain top. "That's the Israeli -observation post for the occupied Golan Heights," he said. "The fence between Lebanon and the occupied section of Shebba Farms is just 500 metres away, so we need a place to protect the patients and doctors in case of an attack." The hospital is a gift from Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed, the President of the UAE and Ruler of Abu Dhabi, to the mostly Sunni and Druze residents of Shebba Farms, a remote mountain town isolated even further by regional politics. Shebba sits at the three-way meeting of Syria, Lebanon and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Israeli soldiers can frequently be seen patrolling along the hi-tech fence intended to keep out Lebanese resistance fighters, who have used the rugged mountain terrain for attacks on occupying troops. And even for a reporter to visit the tense area requires a slew of official permissions from the Lebanese authorities and unofficial calls to Hizbollah, the militant Shiite group, which tightly controls access to the area for security reasons. The National was granted access to the area under an agreement with the Lebanese military not to photograph or conduct interviews outside of the hospital complex. These security controls have had a devastating effect on the local community, which shrinks from about 35,000 people in summer to less than 10,000 in winter due to brutal weather and a lack of economic development caused by the security restrictions on travel through the area and the ongoing tensions between the three countries. "There's never been any real economic development here, so most of the young people leave for Beirut or abroad," said Mr Haydar, who hails from Khaym, a nearby Shiite town considered a Hizbollah stronghold and the location of the infamous Israeli prison used throughout the occupation of South Lebanon from 1978 to 2000. "This hospital, when completed, will offer the most modern health services to 35,000 to 40,000 people who have never had a real clinic, let alone a hospital before. In the past, anyone who needed a hospital had to travel to Majayoun." In good weather it can take up to 90 minutes by car to reach Majayoun, the closest major town to the area, but in winter, the roads are frequently impassable. The effort to bring modern medical care to the people in this most remote of corners in Lebanon began in 2007 and the hospital is now essentially completed and in the process of installing equipment. Scattered throughout the facility, which rivals even Beirut's American University Hospital for modern fixtures, are top-end machines from X-ray and MRI devices, to postnatal care for premature infants. Expected to become operational this month, the hospital will have 40 beds for in-patient care and the capacity to serve as a clinic for the entire region, said Mr Haydar. But it is not just the modern facilities that are so striking about the facility: its location, nestled among the most beautiful mountains in the Middle East, has Mr Haydar joking that the project is misguided. "Of course there is a great need for this facility, but when you stand here and look into the mountains and their beauty, I wish that we could be building a tourist resort so that people can come visit this land and help us develop economically," he said. "This view is almost wasted on a hospital." [e-mail]