AS Lebanon’s financial crisis deepens Caritas Australia is urging Australians to donate towards its emergency and long-term response in the country.
About 90 per cent has been wiped off the value of the local currency since 2019, food prices inflated by up to 1000 per cent in some cases, and three-quarters of the population plunged into poverty in less than 18 months.
“What was happening in Lebanon was already bad, but now things are getting much worse. A catastrophe is unfolding,” Caritas Australia’s Humanitarian Emergencies Manager, Melville Fernandez, said.
“It’s getting harder and harder for families to survive. Right now, for the vast majority of people it’s virtually impossible to buy fuel for cars or generators, which have now become even more important as the electricity supply has been cut to almost nothing.”
“Clean water, medicine and basic food items like sugar, eggs, meat and rice have all skyrocketed in price, leaving many Lebanese families unable to afford groceries.”
Lebanon’s economic crisis is so severe that the World Bank says it may be one of the top three worst economic crises in the past 150 years. Rapid hyperinflation has left swathes of the population unable to afford housing, education, healthcare, clean water and transportation.
Many hospitals are struggling with a dire medicine and fuel shortage and are now unable to provide standard treatments including magnesium for women with eclampsia, or antibiotics for people with septic shock.
Last month, marking the one-year anniversary of a deadly explosion in Beirut, Pope Francis said Lebanon needed concrete help, not just words, from the international community.
“I think above all of the victims and their families, the many injured, and those who lost their homes and livelihoods. So many people have lost the desire to go on,” Francis said at the end of his general audience in the Paul VI audience hall on August 4.
“Dear people of Lebanon, I greatly desire to visit you and I continue to pray for you, so that Lebanon will once more be a message of peace and fraternity for the entire Middle East.”
“I urge Australians to remember our long-standing and close relationship with Lebanon, a country that has enriched our own culture so much after the past decades, and stand up in support in these challenging times,” Mr Fernandez said.
Caritas Australia continues to support Caritas Lebanon with both emergency and long-term response.
You can donate at caritas.org.au/lebanon or by calling 1800 024 413 toll free.
