Impressed by what he saw during a recent visit to Libya, Saint James Hospital chairman Josie Muscat felt compelled to help the Libyan doctors and nurses who are performing miracles despite the unfavourable circumstances.

Writing in The Times today (see Talking Point on back page) Dr Muscat describes his experience and launches an appeal to collect money so that basic hospital equipment can be bought for a hospital in Misurata.

“I have never witnessed a war first hand and I was super impressed by the suffering I saw,” Dr Muscat said when contacted.

The image of buildings pockmarked with bullets or flattened to the ground are stuck in his head as are the scenes of patients receiving life-saving treatment in an ITU ward set up in what was once a classroom.

“Hospitals as we know them do not exist because they were destroyed and instead schools were transformed into makeshift clinics where doctors and nurses perform miracles,” Dr Muscat said.

There was a lot of suffering, he added, and the problems besetting the Libyan healthcare system were manifold.

“There are short-term problems in terms of medical equipment they need to be able to deliver treatment but there are also long-term concerns related to patient rehabilitation, especially when dealing with psychological scars.”

Dr Muscat said his appeal for funds intends to raise some €24,000 with which two arterial blood gas analysers and consumables can be bought.

The equipment is vital in emergency departments since it measures how effectively the lungs are delivering oxygen and removing carbon dioxide to and from the blood.

Dr Muscat said Saint James Hospital will be providing the Misurata hospital with microbiological facilities for its laboratory and contacts were being made to have the CT scan repaired.

“It is the least we could do,” Dr Muscat said.