Lebanon’s Protests: Cleaning in the Morning and Partying at Night

Lebanese activists clean a main road in downtown Beirut. AFP photo
Lebanese activists clean a main road in downtown Beirut. AFP photo
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Lebanon’s Protests: Cleaning in the Morning and Partying at Night

Lebanese activists clean a main road in downtown Beirut. AFP photo
Lebanese activists clean a main road in downtown Beirut. AFP photo

Medical student Lynn Abi Khalil, 17, says she could not take part in Lebanon's massive spontaneous protests against the government so instead she picked up gloves and a trash bag.

"I haven't been participating in the demonstrations because my family doesn't want me to," she says, as she collects rubbish in the center of the capital.

"So I'm taking part in a different way," she tells Agence France Presse, wearing a white medical mask.

On Sunday night, hundreds of thousands gathered across the country chanting against what they view as a corrupt and arrogant ruling class unable to lift the country out of its daily economic woes.

In the capital's main square, on Monday morning, the ground is strewn with plastic water bottles, smoldering trash, and the odd red-and-white Lebanese flag.

"Leave now," reads a trampled flyer bearing a picture of Prime Minister Saad Hariri.

Abi Khalil is one of hundreds of men, women and children who have flocked to the edge of the capital's Martyrs' Square in the early hours to do their part.

On the pavement at the foot of a large mosque, volunteers crouch behind an orderly line of supplies, handing them out to those who have turned up.

In a country infamous for major trash spillovers and sub-standard recycling, there are blue bags for plastic, green for glass and metal, and black for general waste.

Wearing a dark grey T-shirt and backpack, Peter Mouracade has been coming to Martyrs' Square since Saturday morning.

"I went to my kitchen, looked at was inside the cupboard –- plastic bags, gloves -- and I just went down to the streets," says the 39-year-old.

But the volunteer movement has since ballooned as the streets fill day after day with Lebanese from all religious sects and walks of life venting their discontent -- and then also cleaning up.

"From three or five people, we ended up being 50. From 50, we became 500. Today we have thousands of people who are coming," he says.

Mouracade, who is the CEO of the Beirut Marathon, says he and other volunteers mostly find a lot of plastic bottles.

When he first started out on Saturday, it followed a night of several people overturning trash dumpsters and setting them alight, or even breaking shop windows.

"There are a lot of people who are feeling a lot of anger and a lot of pain, that's why there's so much destruction," he adds.

"We need to respect the voice of the people, and our duty is to clean" afterwards.

On the square, female volunteers scoop up piles of used half lemons -- some with rind curling off them -- and burnt trash.

Suheil Hamdan, 49, films them with his mobile phone, seemingly making a video to share on social media.

"This is where corrupt lawmakers and ministers in our country belong -- in the bin bags," he says, a cap on his head to keep off the sun.

Sami Deeb, a 34-year-old, has taken the day off from running his struggling food distribution business.

"We have been on the ground for four days fighting for our rights," he says, dressed in an immaculately pressed pink shirt.

For days, he has been taking part in the protests, which late Sunday evolved into euphoric celebrations complete with humoristic songs, DJs, and traditional dabke dancing.

"We clean in the morning, and we party at night," he says.



Experts: Baby in Gaza Has Strain of Polio Linked to Mistakes in Eradication Campaign

The mother of Palestinian boy Abdul Rahman Abu Al-Jidyan, who is the first person to contract polio in Gaza in 25 years, gestures as she looks after him in their tent, in Deir Al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip August 28, 2024. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
The mother of Palestinian boy Abdul Rahman Abu Al-Jidyan, who is the first person to contract polio in Gaza in 25 years, gestures as she looks after him in their tent, in Deir Al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip August 28, 2024. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
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Experts: Baby in Gaza Has Strain of Polio Linked to Mistakes in Eradication Campaign

The mother of Palestinian boy Abdul Rahman Abu Al-Jidyan, who is the first person to contract polio in Gaza in 25 years, gestures as she looks after him in their tent, in Deir Al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip August 28, 2024. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
The mother of Palestinian boy Abdul Rahman Abu Al-Jidyan, who is the first person to contract polio in Gaza in 25 years, gestures as she looks after him in their tent, in Deir Al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip August 28, 2024. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed

The baby in Gaza who was recently paralyzed by polio was infected with a mutated strain of the virus that vaccinated people shed in their waste, according to scientists who say the case is the result of “an unqualified failure” of public health policy.
The infection, which marked the first detection of polio in the war-torn Palestinian territory in more than 25 years, paralyzed the lower part of one leg in the unvaccinated 10-month-old child. The baby boy was one of hundreds of thousands of children who missed vaccinations because of the fighting between Israel and Hamas.
Scientists who have been monitoring polio outbreaks said the baby's illness showed the failures of a global effort by the World Health Organization and its partners to fix serious problems in their otherwise largely successful eradication campaign, which has nearly wiped out the highly infectious disease. Separately, a draft report by experts deemed the WHO effort a failure and “a severe setback.”
The polio strain in question evolved from a weakened virus that was originally part of an oral vaccine credited with preventing millions of children worldwide from being paralyzed. But that virus was removed from the vaccine in 2016 in hopes of preventing vaccine-derived outbreaks.
Public health authorities knew that decision would leave people unprotected against that particular strain, but they thought they had a plan to ward off and quickly contain any outbreaks. Instead, the move resulted in a surge of thousands of cases, The Associated Press reported.
“It was a really horrible strategy,” said Columbia University virologist Vincent Racaniello, who was not involved with the report or the WHO. “The decision to switch vaccines was based on an incorrect assumption, and the result is now we have more polio and more paralyzed children.”
A draft copy of the report commissioned by the WHO and independent experts said the plan underestimated the amount of the strain in the environment and overestimated how well officials would be able to squash outbreaks.
The plan led to vaccine-linked polio outbreaks in 43 countries that paralyzed more than 3,300 children, the report concluded.
Even before the Gaza case was detected, officials reviewing the initiative to tinker with the vaccine concluded that “the worst-case scenario has materialized,” the report said.
The report has not yet been published, and some changes will likely be made before the final version is released next month, the WHO said.
The strain that infected the baby in Gaza had lingered in the environment and mutated into a version capable of starting outbreaks. It was traced to polio viruses spreading last year in Egypt, according to genetic sequencing, the WHO said.
In 2022, vaccine-linked polio viruses were found to be spreading in Britain, Israel and the US, where an unvaccinated man was paralyzed in upstate New York.
Scientists now worry that the emergence of polio in a war zone with an under-immunized population could fuel further spread.
Racaniello said the failure to track polio carefully and to sufficiently protect children against the strain removed from the vaccine has had devastating consequences.
“Only about 1% of polio cases are symptomatic, so 99% of infections are silently spreading the disease,” he said.
The oral polio vaccine, which contains a weakened live virus, was withdrawn in the US in 2000. Doctors continued to vaccinate children and eventually moved to an injected vaccine, which uses a dead virus and does not come with the risk that polio will be present in human waste. Such waste-borne virus could mutate into a form that triggers outbreaks in unvaccinated people.
The report's authors faulted leaders at the WHO and its partners, saying they were unable or unwilling “to recognize the seriousness of the evolving problem and take corrective action.”
WHO spokesman Oliver Rosenbauer acknowledged that the vaccine strategy “exacerbated” the risk of epidemics linked to the vaccine.
He said in an email that immunization “was not implemented in such a way to rapidly stop outbreaks or to prevent new strains from emerging.” Rosenbauer said not hitting vaccination targets was the biggest risk for allowing vaccine-linked viruses to emerge.
“You need to reach the children with the vaccines ... regardless of which vaccines are used,” he said.
The WHO estimates that 95% of the population needs to be immunized against polio to stop outbreaks. The UN health agency said only about 90% of Gaza’s population was vaccinated earlier this year.
To try to stop polio in Gaza and the wider region, the WHO and its partners plan two rounds of vaccination campaigns later this week and next month, aiming to cover 640,000 children. Authorities will use a newer version of the oral polio vaccine that targets the problematic strain. The weakened live virus in the new vaccine is less likely to cause vaccine-derived outbreaks, but they are still possible.
Racaniello said it was “unethical” that the WHO and its partners were using a vaccine that is unlicensed in rich countries precisely because it can increase the risk of polio in unvaccinated children.
The oral polio vaccine, which has reduced infections globally by more than 99%, is easy to make and distribute. Children require just two drops per dose that can be administered by volunteers. The oral vaccine is better at stopping transmission than the injected version, and it is cheaper and easier to administer.
But as the number of polio cases caused by the wild virus have plummeted in recent years, health officials have been struggling to contain the increasing spread of vaccine-linked cases, which now comprise the majority of polio infections in more than a dozen countries, in addition to Afghanistan and Pakistan, where transmission of the wild virus has never been stopped.
“This is the result of the Faustian bargain we made when we decided to use" the oral polio vaccine, said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the University of Philadelphia. “If we really want to eradicate polio, then we need to stop using the vaccine with live (weakened) virus.”