Orient Hospital



The Orient Hospital (Arabic: مستشفى الشرق) was a Lebanese non-profit hospital. Whose mission was to admit Low-Income patients. It was founded in 1947 by Dr. Sami Ibrahim Haddad.

Location and Description
It overlooked the Saint Georges bay in Beirut.It was a 54 bed hospital. The main structure was a renovated five-story building with a newly built annex for nurses. The ground floor consisted of admissions, a reception hall enclosed by consultation offices, a medical laboratory, and an OPD. The second floor was devoted to surgical beds, while the third floor housed the medical patients. A single operating theater occupied the fourth floor with its sterilizing equipment, and a 50-seats lecture hall was adjacent to it.The fifth floor, with its terrace all around, was the living quarters for interns. It was organized into four departments, urology and urosurgery, neuro-surgery, obstetrics, and radiology. External Specialists were allowed to admit and operate upon their patients at the hospital.

It had a superlative library containing a great number of manuscripts on a wide range of subjects, namely: Arabic medicine, biology, religion, numismatics, history, literature, and Arabic geometry and astronomy. It constitutes now Sami Ibrahim Haddad Memorial Library, the Annual Reports of the Orient Hospital being a part of.

The End of the Humanitarian Mission
The hospital was run and administered by his founder until his death in 1957, after which his sons, Dr. Farid Sami Haddad and Dr.Fuad Sami Haddad took over. The Orient Hospital closed its doors in 1976 at the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War.It was later demolished by its owners to prevent gunmen occupying it (as it was in the heavily fought over area of downtown Beirut).