Saint-Antoine Dispensary

Project Background

The Dispensary Saint-Antoine is located in Jdeideh, as one enters the Roueissat quarter in the suburb of Beirut. It was started in 1987 with the help of a team including religious and lay persons. The Sisters assumed responsibility for the medico-social services of the Dispensary Saint-Antoine in March 2003. During the 2006 Lebanese war, the dispensary offered medical and social assistance to the neediest and the marginalized in the region and has continued in the aftermath of the war. During the conflict, the dispensary welcomed 3.500 persons who lacked all basic needs to survive, so they were provided with food, clothes, sheets… 

The Dispensary Saint-Antoine serves the peoples both from Jdeideh (20%, mostly Christians) and Roueissat (80% distributed as follows: 10% Christians, 80% Chiites, and 10% Sunnites). 5% of the beneficiaries are made up of Egyptians, Sudanese, Iraqis, Syrians, and other foreign workers living in the area. The Dispensary Saint-Antoine is currently the only affordable health care service in Roueissat for those most ignored and neglected. The number of patients per month is 800 persons: 50% children, 30% women and 20% adults. 

At the moment, the team, working at the dispensary, are all volunteers: twenty medical doctors, specializing in all fields, ensure free medical services every week. The dispensary also collaborates with the Pediatrics Department of Hotel Dieu de France and Saint Joseph University, which ensure daily pediatric health services. The Ministry of Health provides free medicines, vaccines, and other basic materials. The Young Men Christian Association, a local NGO, provides medicines for chronic diseases. Occasionally, the dispensary receives financial assistance from international NGOs such as, Mission Enfance, and the Church of Latter Day Saints. 

Problem

Roueissat is a shantytown where 40.000 people struggle to live and face many issues:

• The rate of unemployment in Roueissat reaches 30% due to the lack of professional qualifications and the existence of cheaper and illegal foreign manual labour likely to be exploited.
• The deterioration of the economic situation over the last few years has mostly affected the underprivileged. Most of these families can hardly feed their children and schooling is not available for all.
• Juvenile delinquency, alcoholism, drugs, prostitution and illnesses of all kinds thrive in the area.
• Absence of governmental social support. 

Objective

The outcome of an evaluation and needs assessment in the region highlighted the need of undertaking the following actions for making the dispensary more effective:

• Restructuring the locale to separate the different services;
• Purchasing the necessary medical equipment and furnishing the facility for the different services;
• Greater diversification of medical services

These actions would  allow the improvement of the quality of the services provided and would consequently improve the daily life of the population by offering quality healthcare to an increasing number of people. 

To achieve its objective of providing the best medical service to the most vulnerable population of the area, the dispensary adopted a new methodology that is founded on three major principles:

• Curative Medicine: The dispensary ensures medical consultations and basic medicines to its beneficiaries. Three main consultations are ensured daily: Family Medicine, Pediatrics, and Gynecology; in addition to weekly consultations in Cardiology, Rheumatology, Gastroenterology, Ophthalmology, Otorhinolaryngology , and General Surgery.
• Preventive Medicine: A vaccination program is established for children, adolescents, and adults. The obligatory vaccines schedule, stated by the Ministry of Health is applied. Other facultative vaccines are available and proposed. A systematic screening for cervical and breast cancers of women and prostate cancer for men is performed.
• Community Approach and Health Education: This is a major component of the dispensary work. Because we believe that health standards cannot be raised without good information around health issues and without a change of habits and attitudes that generate the diseases, the dispensary implements, with the participation of its medical body, monthly community health education sessions. The participation and the interest of the population continue to rise. 

The presence of the Dispensary Saint-Antoine in that specific area of Beirut has two other objectives besides the ones described above:

• The Saint-Antoine Dispensary is a point for meeting each other in a multi-ethnic area:  Seeking the same services, and attending health education sessions, people from different areas, religious affiliations, and nationalities have the chance to meet each other, discuss their problems, discover their similarities and value their differences.
• The Saint-Antoine Dispensary fosters solidarity: meant as a two-way exchange, solidarity is fostered through the dispensary work at different levels. The dispensary work gives the opportunity to very different people to join efforts in accomplishing a common goal. 

Activities

• The following medical materials will be purchased: Carts for equipment, tensiometers, stethoscopes, otoscopes, égatoscopes, minor surgery materials, pedestal tables, ophthalmoscopes, scales for adults and babies, scanner, ECG machine, basic laboratory equipment.
• The different medical services that the dispensary will be able to provide are the following: Pediatrics, Family Medicine, Gynecology, Cardiology, Ophthalmology, Oto-rhino-laryngology, Laboratory, Pharmacy, and Echograms.
• The dispensary consists of a Reception and waiting room, a Pharmacy, Consultation rooms, and utilities for these rooms. 

Results/Work in Progress…

October 2008 - A donation allowed the acquisition of a new locale more adapted to the dispensary mission, the current one being an old prefabricated house.

The new flat needs to be restructured and furnished in order to fulfill a dispensary requisitions.