BEIRUT (AP) — For nearly a week, ophthalmologist Elias Jaradeh has been working around the clock, trying to cope with the flood of patients whose eyes were injured during surgery. pagers and walkie-talkies exploded en masse across Lebanon.
He has lost count of the number of eye operations he has performed in several hospitals, surviving on two hours of sleep before moving on to the next operation. He has managed to save the sight of some patients, but many will never see again.
“There is no doubt that what happened is extremely tragic, when you see this huge number of people with eye injuries arriving at the hospital at the same time, most of them young men, but also children and young women,” he told The Associated Press at a Beirut hospital last week, struggling to hold back tears.
Lebanese hospitals and medical teams have been overwhelmed after thousands of handheld devices belonging to the Hezbollah militant group exploded simultaneously on Tuesday and Wednesday last week, killing at least 39 people. About 3,000 others were injured, some with permanent disabilities. Israel is widely believed to be behind the attack, though the country has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement.
Although the explosions appear to have targeted Hezbollah fighters, many of the victims were civilians. In addition, many of those injured in the attack suffered injuries to their hands, faces and eyes because the devices received messages just before they exploded, and so they were looking at them at the time of the explosion.
Authorities have not said how many people lost their eyes.
Experienced and seasoned Lebanese ophthalmologists, who have had to deal with the aftermath of several wars, civil unrest and explosions, said they had never seen anything like it.
Jaradeh, who is also a reformist MP in South Lebanon, said most of the patients sent to his hospital, which specializes in ophthalmology, were young people with significant eye injuries. He said he found plastic and metal shards in some of their eyes.
Four years ago, a A powerful explosion has ripped through the port of Beirut, killing more than 200 people and injuring more than 6,000. The explosion, caused by the detonation of hundreds of tons of ammonium nitrate that had been stored unsafely in a port warehouse, blew out windows and doors for miles around and sent shards of glass showering down the streets, causing horrible injuries.
Jaradeh also treated people injured in the port explosion, but his experience with those injured by the exploding pagers and walkie-talkies was all the more intense because of the large number of people suffering eye injuries.
“It took, I think, 48 hours to contain the shock after the Beirut port explosion, but we have not yet reached the period of shock containment,” Jaradeh said.
Jaradeh said he struggles to separate his work as a doctor from his emotions in the operating room.
“No matter what you were taught (in medical school) about social distancing, I think in a situation like this, it’s very hard when you see the number of injuries. This is related to a war against Lebanon and a war against humanity,” Jaradeh said.
