BEIRUT: Christine Tohme had already been diagnosed with ovarian cancer when Lebanon’s financial system began to unravel in 2019. She never expected that two years later her country’s economic meltdown would pose a direct threat to her life.
The 50-year-old was later diagnosed with third stage colon cancer in February. Having undergone surgery earlier this year, she was then prescribed six sessions of chemotherapy.
But with shortages of basic goods plaguing every aspect of Lebanese life, Tohme was told there was no guarantee she would complete her treatment as hospitals run out of vital drugs.
So far she has only undergone three sessions. Her cancer has metastasized to her lymph nodes and she fears if she cannot complete her treatment she will only have months to live.
Having knocked on every door to try to secure her medication at any cost, Tohme took to the streets on Thursday, despite her ailing health, to join a sit-in protest with other cancer patients, doctors and nongovernmental organizations.
“I’m hoping that God gives me strength, as I don’t have that much, to stand on my two feet and take part so that maybe people will see us and sympathize with us and send us treatment,” Tohme told Reuters two days before the event. “I have kids, I want to be happy with them and see them get married and become a grandmother.”
Lebanese healthcare workers have warned for months of declining stocks of vital medical supplies. Many pharmacy shelves are empty as the country’s foreign reserves are depleted on the back of a subsidy scheme used to finance fuel, wheat and medicine that cost the state around $6 billion a year.
This month the central bank declared it could no longer finance fuel imports at subsidized exchange rates because its dollar reserves had been so badly depleted.
Tohme’s case is not unique. Dr. Joseph Makdessi, who heads the hematology and oncology department at the Saint George Hospital University Medical Center, estimates around 10 percent of cancer patients have been unable to source their treatment in the past couple of months.
“We need an immediate solution,” Makdessi said. “I can’t tell my patients this is a crisis and ask them to wait till it eases because this disease has no patience.”
Lebanon’s deeply indebted state is struggling to raise funds from abroad amidst political paralysis and has gradually eradicated many subsidies.
But cancer medications are still subsidised, meaning in order for agents to import them they have to wait for financing from the central bank, which has all but run down its reserves.
Yet Dr. Makdessi isn’t optimistic that easing subsidies on cancer drugs will solve his patients’ pressing problem.
Some chemotherapy treatments, which can cost as much as $5,000 per session, are currently subsidized so the patient pays around $400, with the state bearing the rest of the cost.
“Even if you lift this subsidy to make the medication available, many patients won’t be able to afford it,” he said.
The Health Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Caretaker Health Minister Hamad Hassan, who has been raiding depots storing large quantities of drugs and medical supplies, partly blamed the shortages on traders hoarding supplies.
The Barbara Nassar Association for Cancer Patient Support, the Lebanese advocacy group that organized Thursday’s sit-in, has provided medication worth more than $1.5 million in 2020 through in-kind donations from former patients.
But now Hani Nassar, whose wife Barbara founded the organization before passing away from the disease years ago, says the country’s fractious politics is hampering efforts to alleviate the problem.
“The central bank wants to remove the subsidy and the Health Ministry doesn’t and in the meantime the patient is sitting there without treatment,” Nassar said.
At Thursday’s sit-in, patients said they were reaching out to whoever could help them get a second chance at life. “After all I endured, I lost my nails and hair and my body changed, now I reached this point of not finding the treatment and this really set me back,” engineer Bahaa Costantine said.
“I was a person who was full of energy and loves life, I don’t want to be a bride for heaven, this is what I refuse. I hope my voice reaches someone who can help.”
Clock ticking for Lebanese cancer patients as shortages bite
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Clock ticking for Lebanese cancer patients as shortages bite
- "We need an immediate solution. I can’t tell my patients this is a crisis and ask them to wait till it eases because this disease has no patience"
Lebanese foreign minister discusses reforms, weapons control with Saudi ambassador to Beirut
- Youssef Rajji and Waleed Al-Bukhari consider latest developments in Lebanon and the Middle East
- Al-Bukhari confirms the Kingdom’s full support for the reform process in Lebanon
BEIRUT: The Lebanese minister of foreign affairs reassured Saudi Ambassador Waleed Al-Bukhari that Beirut is committed to financial reforms and restricting the possession of weapons outside the state’s control.
Youssef Rajji met with Al-Bukhari in Beirut on Thursday to discuss the latest developments in Lebanon and the Middle East
Rajji said that Lebanon is committed to implementing the necessary economic, financial, and administrative reforms and ensure that weapons are held exclusively by the state. He said this policy will “put Lebanon on the trail of recovery and advancement,” the National News Agency reported.
He expressed gratitude to the Saudi leadership for supporting Lebanon and its people and said that relations between Riyadh and Beirut have reinstated Lebanon to its rightful place among its Arab neighbors.
Al-Bukhari reaffirmed the Kingdom’s full support for Lebanon’s reform process, which is led by President Joseph Aoun, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, and the government formed in February.
Killed Gaza medic’s mother says he ‘loved helping people’
- Rifaat Radwan, a medic from the Palestine Red Crescent Society, was one of 15 killed in an attck by Israel that has sparked outrage
- His family describe their sorrow at losing their son said being a medic 'was his calling'
GAZA: Umm Rifaat Radwan, the mother of a Gaza medic killed alongside 14 colleagues by Israeli soldiers, had hoped her son’s body would not be among those retrieved after the attack.
Rifaat Radwan was part of a team of medics and rescuers from the Palestine Red Crescent Society and Gaza’s civil defense agency who were shot dead on March 23 near Rafah as they responded to calls for help after an Israeli air strike.
Their deaths sparked international condemnation and renewed scrutiny over the risks aid workers face in Gaza, where war has raged since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel triggered Israel’s military campaign.
Israel’s army chief, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, has ordered an investigation into the March 23 incident.
The bodies of the 15 emergency personnel were discovered buried in the sand days later, and were recovered in two separate operations, the United Nations and the Red Crescent said.
“They began pulling them out two by two” from a hole, Umm Rifaat, 48, told AFP, describing how the bodies were retrieved from what rescuers called a “mass grave.”
“I thought maybe he wasn’t among them — perhaps he had been detained. I even prostrated after the afternoon prayer in gratitude.
“Then my husband told me that Rifaat had been found inside the hole,” she said.
The 23-year-old Rifaat and his family hailed from Rafah, but had been displaced during the war to the central Gazan city of Deir el-Balah.
On March 23, he and the 14 others were killed in the Tal Al-Sultan area near Rafah, in what the sole survivor of the attack, Mundhir Abed, described as a violent ambush by Israeli forces.
Abed told AFP earlier that the team was shot dead by Israeli soldiers in the early morning.
Umm Rifaat, wearing a long black abaya and veil exposing only her eyes, spoke with quiet composure as she recalled the moment her worst fears were confirmed.
Some of the bodies recovered by rescuers had been handcuffed, according to the Red Crescent, but an Israeli military official denied this.
On Thursday, government spokesman David Mencer repeated Israel’s claim that “six Hamas terrorists” were among the dead.
“What were Hamas terrorists doing in ambulances?” he asked.
The Israeli attack appears to have occurred in two phases.
Rifaat himself partly captured video and audio of the second assault on his convoy of ambulances and a firetruck before he was killed.
The Israeli military official told journalists that soldiers who were in the area received a report about a convoy “moving in the dark in a suspicious way toward them” without headlights, prompting them to fire at the vehicles from a distance.
“They thought they had an encounter with terrorists,” the official said.
But Rifaat’s video, released by the Red Crescent, contradicted this account.
The footage from the phone found on Rifaat’s body shows ambulances moving with their headlights and emergency lights clearly switched on.
“He proved his innocence with his own hands, that he is innocent in the face of the (Israeli) army’s allegations,” Rifaat’s mother said.
“What happened to them is beyond the mind’s comprehension. It is unacceptable by any measure — legal, religious or human.”
Speaking to AFP from the displaced family’s makeshift shelter in Deir el-Balah, Umm Rifaat scrolled through photos of her son on her phone.
Her husband recalled the passion with which Rifaat worked as a paramedic.
“Every day he came home from work with his clothes stained in blood,” Anwar Radwan said, adding that his son had volunteered to do the job after the Gaza war erupted in October 2023.
“He never sought a salary — this was rather a calling he loved with all his blood and soul. What drove him was simply his humanity,” Rifaat’s father said.
“He loved helping people,” added Umm Rifaat.
His father saw Rifaat’s body and told Umm Rifaat that their son’s face had been “deformed.”
She chose not to see the body, preferring instead to preserve her memory of him as he was in life.
“He was like the moon — handsome and fair-skinned,” Umm Rifaat said.
Kurds to push for federal system in post-Assad Syria
- Kurdish parties agree on federalism as common political vision, sources tell Reuters
QAMISHLI: Syrian Kurds are set to demand a federal system in post-Assad Syria that would allow regional autonomy and security forces, a senior Kurdish official told Reuters, doubling down on a decentralized vision opposed by the interim president.
The demand for federal rule has gathered momentum as alarm spread through Syria’s minorities over last month’s mass killings of Alawites, while Kurdish groups have accused interim President Ahmed Al-Sharaa and his Islamist group of setting the wrong course for the new Syria and monopolising power.
Rival Syrian Kurdish parties, including the dominant faction in the Kurdish-run northeast, agreed on a common political vision — including federalism — last month, Kurdish sources said. They have yet to officially unveil it. Kurdish-led groups took control of roughly a quarter of Syrian territory during the 14-year civil war. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, backed by the US, last month signed a deal with Damascus on merging Kurdish-led governing bodies and security forces with the central government.
While committed to that deal, Kurdish officials have objected to the way Syria’s governing Islamists are shaping the transition from Bashar Assad’s rule, saying they are failing to respect Syria’s diversity despite promises of inclusivity.
Badran Jia Kurd, a senior official in the Kurdish-led administration, told Reuters that all Kurdish factions had agreed on a “common political vision” which emphasizes the need for “a federal, pluralistic, democratic parliamentary system.”
His written statements in response to questions from Reuters mark the first time an official from the Kurdish-led administration has confirmed the federalism goal since the Kurdish parties agreed on it last month.
The Kurdish-led administration has for years steered clear of the word “federalism” in describing its goals, instead calling for decentralization. Syria’s Kurds say their goal is autonomy within Syria — not independence.
Sharaa has declared his opposition to a federal system, telling The Economist in January that it does not have popular acceptance and is not in Syria’s best interests.
The Kurds, mainly Sunni Muslims, speak a language related to Farsi and live mostly in a mountainous region straddling the borders of Armenia, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkiye. In Iraq, they have their own parliament, government and security forces.
Jia Kurd said the fundamental issue for Syria was “to preserve the administrative, political, and cultural specificity of each region” which would require “local legislative councils within the region, executive bodies to manage the region’s affairs, and internal security forces affiliated with them.”
This should be set out in Syria’s constitutional framework, he added.
Neighbouring Turkiye, an ally of Sharaa, sees Syria’s main Kurdish group, the Democratic Union Party, and its affiliates as a security threat because of their links to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which, until a recently declared ceasefire, fought a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state.
Last month’s meeting brought the PYD together with the Kurdish National Council (ENKS), a rival Syrian Kurdish group established with backing from one of Iraq’s main Kurdish parties, the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) led by the Barzani family. The KDP has good ties with Turkiye.
ENKS leader Suleiman Oso said he expected the joint Kurdish vision to be announced at a conference by the end of April. He said developments in Syria since Assad’s ouster in December had led many Syrians to see the federal system as the “optimal solution.” He cited attacks on Alawites, resistance to central rule within the Druze minority, and the new government’s constitutional declaration, which the Kurdish-led administration said was at odds with Syria’s diversity.
Hundreds of Alawites were killed in western Syria in March in revenge attacks which began after Islamist-led authorities said their security forces came under attack by militants loyal to Assad, an Alawite. Sharaa, an Al-Qaeda leader before he cut ties to the group in 2016, has said those responsible will be punished, including his own allies if necessary. The constitutional declaration gave him broad powers, enshrined Islamic law as the main source of legislation, and declared Arabic as Syria’s official language, with no mention of Kurdish.
“We believe that the optimal solution to preserve Syria’s unity is a federal system, as Syria is a country of multiple ethnicities, religions, and sects,” said Oso.
“When we go to Damascus, we will certainly present our views and demands.”
UAE and India strengthen ties with 8 new cooperation agreements
MUMBAI: The UAE and India signed eight Memorandums of Understanding on Thursday across a broad range of sectors including infrastructure, healthcare, higher education, logistics and maritime services.
Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, Dubai’s crown prince and UAE defense minister, and Indian Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal witnessed the signing at an event organized by Dubai Chambers in Mumbai.
Sheikh Hamdan, who is on his first official visit to India, said the two nations were “bound by a deep-rooted friendship and a shared dedication to shaping the future through innovation, opportunity, and sustainable growth.”
He added they “continue to build on a strong foundation of trust and collaboration,” guided by the vision of UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, UAE Vice President and Prime Minister and Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India.
“These MoUs broaden and deepen our strategic partnership in line with our mutual commitment to creating resilient economies, empowering communities, and advancing knowledge, technology and human development. Together, we are advancing a model of international cooperation that delivers real impact and long-term benefits for the people of our two countries,” said Sheikh Hamdan.
Dubai Chambers signed three MoUs with leading Indian business bodies — the Confederation of Indian Industry, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, and the Indian Merchants’ Chamber — to support mutual market expansion, facilitate networking and promote participation in trade missions and exhibitions.
The agreements aim to boost information-sharing and enhance bilateral trade.
DP World signed two MoUs — one with Rail India Technical and Economic Service to develop advanced, tech-enabled supply chains and multimodal logistics infrastructure through the UAE-India Virtual Trade Corridor, and another between Drydocks World and Cochin Shipyard to jointly develop ship repair clusters in Kochi and Vadinar.
In the education sector, Dubai’s Department of Economy and Tourism signed an MoU with the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad to establish a new campus in Dubai. The facility will initially open in Dubai International Academic City, with plans for a permanent campus by 2029.
Healthcare collaboration was also a major focus. Dubai Health and key business figures from both countries signed an MoU to establish the UAE-India Friendship Hospital in Dubai, a philanthropic project offering inclusive healthcare services.
Additionally, Dubai Medical University and the All India Institute of Medical Science signed a cooperation agreement to facilitate joint research, academic exchange and collaboration in digital health and artificial intelligence applications in medicine.
Sheikh Hamdan said the continued growth in trade, investment and cooperation between the UAE and India highlighted the “strategic depth of the relationship” and the “vast potential” of their collaboration.
He added: “We look forward to accelerating progress in sectors that matter most for our collective future, building on the strong momentum we have achieved through frameworks like the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement and the Bilateral Investment Treaty.”
UAE mediates prisoner exchange between US and Russia in Abu Dhabi
- UAE’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs facilitated the exchange of one Russian citizen for one US citizen
- It is the second swap since President Donald Trump returned to office as Moscow and Washington push for closer ties
LONDON: The UAE mediated a prisoner exchange between Russia and the US on Thursday, which took place on its soil in Abu Dhabi.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs facilitated the exchange of one Russian citizen for one US citizen, with representatives from both countries present in Abu Dhabi.
The ministry expressed appreciation for the confidence placed in the UAE by the American and Russian governments in designating Abu Dhabi as the location for the prisoner exchange process, WAM reported.
It added that “choosing Abu Dhabi for the prisoner exchange process reflects the close friendship ties of both countries with the UAE.”
Abu Dhabi hopes these efforts will de-escalate tensions and enhance dialogue, contributing to regional and international security and stability, WAM added.
It is the second swap since President Donald Trump returned to the White House as Russia and the US push for closer ties.
Moscow released US-Russian ballet dancer Ksenia Karelina, who had been sentenced to 12 years in prison on treason charges, with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirming early Thursday she was on a plane to the United States.
In exchange, the United States released Arthur Petrov, a Russian-German citizen who had been facing up to 20 years in a US prison for violating export controls and who was arrested in Cyprus in 2023 at Washington’s request for allegedly exporting sensitive microelectronics.
Abu Dhabi airport
CIA Director John Ratcliffe was present at the Abu Dhabi airport, where the exchange took place on Thursday, the AFP reported.
A CIA spokeswoman told the Wall Street Journal that “the exchange shows the importance of keeping lines of communication open with Russia, despite the deep challenges in our bilateral relationship.”
“While we are disappointed that other Americans remain wrongfully detained in Russia, we see this exchange as a positive step and will continue to work for their release,” she said.
Russia has yet to confirm the swap, which would be the second since Trump returned to the White House in January.
Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin have since pushed for a restoration of closer ties between the two countries that were severely damaged by Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
Several meetings between the two sides have taken place, with a new round of talks beginning Thursday in Istanbul on restoring some of the embassy operations that were scaled back following the Ukraine invasion.
Who are the prisoners?
Karelina, who was born in 1991 and lived in Los Angeles, was serving a 12-year prison sentence for having donated around $50 to a pro-Ukraine charity.
She was arrested in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg in January 2024 while on a trip to visit her family. She was charged with “treason.”
Russia’s Federal Security Service accused her of collecting funds for Ukraine’s army that were used to purchase “equipment, weapons and ammunition” — charges she denied. Her supporters say she donated to a US-based organization that delivers humanitarian aid to Ukraine.
Petrov was accused by US authorities of illegally exporting electronic components to Russia for military use, in violation of Washington’s sanctions against Moscow over the conflict in Ukraine.
In mid-February, following a call between Putin and Trump, Russia released Kalob Wayne Byers, a 28-year-old US citizen who was arrested at a Moscow airport for transporting cannabis treats.
Washington and Moscow also exchanged US teacher Marc Fogel for Russian computer expert Alexander Vinnik in early February.
The largest US-Russia prisoner exchange since the end of the Cold War took place on August 1, 2024. It involved the release of journalists, including WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich, and dissidents held in Russia in exchange for alleged Russian spies held in the West.
Several US citizens remain incarcerated in Russia, with Washington denouncing “hostage-taking” to obtain the release of Russians — including alleged spies — imprisoned in the West.
*Additional reporting from AFP
