The suffering of the Lebanese artist ended at the hospital doors
For generations, many Lebanese artists have suffered from the scarcity and difficulty of finding the price of treatment and medicine in their health crises, and their lives ended without anyone standing by their side to heal their wounds and ease their pain. Many artists, in their old age and illness, found themselves unable to secure the price of expensive treatment, so they stood in front of hospitals unable to enter them because everything was expensive, medicine, hospitalization, and they were unable to afford the exorbitant costs.
The artist was dying of regret because he was the one who devoted his life to bringing joy to people and spreading art and creativity. He was facing neglect and the state’s disregard for its duties towards him, but the minister who was famous for his courageous positions, the Minister of Health, Wael Abu Faour, put an end to that tragedy.
He announced in a press conference held at the Journalists Syndicate that comprehensive coverage would be provided to artists at the expense of the Ministry of Health, and said: “We bid farewell to the poet Said Akl, and the artist Sabah, and before them many, many artists who stood by the Lebanese people. They stood with us all our lives, but we did not stand with them in the difficult days.
The faces we know from afar behind the screen, some of them told our tragedies, our pains and our hopes, and we as a country must provide the minimum requirements of care, and this is a debt owed by the country to its creators.
The Minister expressed his apologies to the artists who passed away without the state batting an eyelid for their departure, and to those who passed away brokenhearted, concluding, “There can be no respectable country if we do not respect the competencies.” Indeed, many artists passed away brokenhearted, with no state caring for them or providing them with material and moral support, including, but not limited to, Alia Nimri, Amalia Abi Saleh, Fahman, Ziad Makkouk, and others. Recently, the great artist Sabah passed away without receiving any health care from the state during her health crisis. In fact, the many times she was admitted to the hospital were at Sabah’s personal expense. In the last years of her life, Minister Leila Solh Hamadeh, Vice President of the “Alwaleed Bin Talal Humanitarian Foundation,” was the one who provided her with the necessary medications for her treatment.
Where would the state have stood by the diva and helped her in her difficult days, when she planted art and love in Lebanon and the Arab world? Minister Abu Faour’s step came to put an end to the suffering of artists and creatives at the doors of hospitals seeking treatment, in the hope that this will include… Comprehensive health coverage for every Lebanese citizen, thus eliminating this concern that plagues every Lebanese person at all stages of his life.