The World Health Organisation has deployed 10 mobile emergency trauma teams to help treat hundreds injured in ongoing violence in the southern part of the Libyan capital, Tripoli.
The teams, comprising doctors and paramedics with essential medicine and emergency equipment, will visit schools and other locations where displaced persons are seeking shelter to determine additional health needs.
“WHO is working with national health authorities and partners on the ground to respond to increasing health needs, but roadblocks remain a major challenge to the delivery of health care,” according to the WHO Representative in Libya, Dr Syed Jaffar Hussain.
The violence has left almost 50 people dead and more than 125 others injured and the situation remains volatile.
WHO has so far delivered trauma medicine for 200 critical cases, and has enough medicine for 2,000 more cases on standby to deliver to hospitals as needed.
“With greater numbers of injured civilians expected, it is imperative that doctors and other health staff be allowed to move freely so that they can save lives without delay and without risk to their own personal safety,” Dr Hussain added.
In the last 12 months alone, an estimated 1.1 million people have been directly affected by the ongoing fighting in Libya and are in need of health aid, including more than 180,000 internally displaced persons.
Sporadic violence started in Tripoli in 2014, as tribal militia began fighting for control of the country’s vast national resources and state coffers.
