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By Adam Ali and Ayman Amzein.
(Photo: Benghazi municipality)
Benghazi, 18 June 2015:
Benghazi now has a much-needed psychiatric hospital a year after the Hawari psychiatric . . .[restrict]clinic was forced to close as fighting raged around it.
A new temporary hospital has been set up in an empty school in the Almajora district of the city. It has beds for 200 patients and a pharmacy for outpatients.
Benghazi mayor Omar Barasi opened the facility yesterday and criticised the government for their lack of support. He said that requests for help in reestablishing psychiatric services in the city had gone unanswered. His council decided in March that the city could no longer manage without organised psychiatric care. They decided to take matters in their own hands and establish a makeshift clinic.
The opening follows the refurbishment and reopening of the polyclinic in the city’s Kish district on Wednesday by Minister of Health Reda Al-Menshawi.
All medical care in Benghazi has been stretched with only two hospitals, Jalaa and the Benghazi Medical centre still functioning, though a lack of staff and fserviceable equipment has meant, for instance in the BMC, that entire wards have had to be closed.
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