Who are we
A group of young men and women, with different backgrounds and unique characters, came along carrying common values and principles, in a time of crises in their country. They focused on the health coverage crisis, which they experienced and suffered from. They agreed that the only solution, is to pave the way to search for a solution or build one. Oummal was born as an idea in mid-2010. It aims to provide health coverage for workers and self-employed people who do not have access for health coverage, hence the name of the organization: Oummal.
Three years of thinking, planning and going through the registration process to try to give legitimacy to their work, was enough for these young men and women to realize that despite the importance of legitimacy, it remains one of the means to achieve the right, and not the only means to it. Any right that was squandered does not need a legal framework for its realization, since the legit practice of the right is stronger than its legitimacy.
“The right is crowned with a decision to implement it, but in the absence of the decision and legal frameworks, the right does not forfeit”.
“Ta ydal alamel, amel” was the title of the launch of the first program, in 2014, the Mutual Fund – Oummal, which aimed to meet the health needs of business owners, small businesses owners and self-employed workers along with their families by bridging the social gap resulting from the absence of universal health coverage. Through their affiliation with the fund with symbolic monthly subscriptions, they were able to ensure the coverage provided by the Ministry of Public Health and pay the resulting hospitalization difference in fees upon admission to the hospital, in addition to covering 50% of the value of external procedures such as radiographs and laboratory tests, in cooperation with the Ministry of Public Health and some hospitals in the North Governorate.
The Mutual Fund program was receiving a huge number of calls, from patients not affiliated with the Fund. The calls focused on complaints of violations against hospitals due to the huge disparities and the failure to receive patients or forcing them to pre-pay upon admission and many complaints were against the various guarantor bodies. Amidst the aggravation of this situation, it was necessary to find a solution.
During three additional years we understood the map of health coverage in Lebanon, and that the state exists, and allocates a huge budget distributed to the official guarantor bodies and that workers can cover at the expense of the Ministry of Public Health without a favor from anyone, even the mutual fund.
These words were part of the speech delivered by Oummal’s president, Mr. Nizar Akleh, in a workshop held at the Beirut Governmental Hospital, in the presence of the Director General of the Ministry of Public Health and the State Employees’ Cooperative and the head of the Hospital Monitoring Department at the National Social Security Fund, as well as the medical staff of the military, in addition to the two unions of doctors in the north and a crowd from the health sector, under the title “How to protect the patient from hospitalization differences among public guarantor bodies”, which was held on the sixth of April 2017, at the conclusion of which seven recommendations were issued, the most prominent of which was the activation of the committee for cooperation and coordination between the guarantor bodies, according to Decree 980 of 2007.
Accordingly, Oummal shifted its goal from providing universal health coverage to “promoting universal health coverage”.
2019 – “National Observatory for the Promotion of Universal Health Coverage”
There is no presence of an entity or a platform that represents the patient, protects him, and defends his rights in the health system in Lebanon. However, we have strong, effective and influential representation of the rest of the health system, such as the unions of hospitals, doctors, pharmacists and importers of medicines and medical supplies. In light of the decline in the role of state institutions and public guarantors, such as the State employees’ cooperative, the National Social Security Fund and the Ministry of Public Health, successive crises we faced in the health sector in Lebanon.
All that makes the patient the weakest link in the system, and makes the idea of creating a platform to defend the patient a necessity. The National Observatory for the Promotion of Universal Health Coverage and its hotline #2424, was a center for receiving hospital complaints equipped with the latest technologies as a platform to suppress hospital violations, leading to lawsuits against some of them. With strong representation of the patient through networking and creating relationships with the civil society, the media and institutions working in the same context, as well as the concerned state institutions, guarantor bodies and the rest of the specialized unions, the change in the methodology of the work of the rest of the system became inevitable, as the balance of power will witness moderation in the interest of the patient with the platform’s intervention in this effective manner to start creating new mechanisms that help maintain patient security and financial stability by starting to reconsider the current hospital bill, re-reading health laws and regulations, and searching for solutions.
Our beloved country is currently going through difficult political, economic and social conditions, and perhaps the most prominent crises that have befallen the world as a whole, and have weighed on all aspects of the citizen’s life and deepened the gap in Lebanon between the state’s offerings and services, and the mechanism for delivering them to the citizen, is the Corona pandemic.
And because “in times of crises, the essence of the person appears”, we had help in these exceptional circumstances by all means, so we applied to the call for proposals put forward by the Ministry of Public Health to operate the human resources of the 1214 hotline, dedicated to the national vaccination campaign and deployment plan.
1214 – Flexible Experience, The Unknown Soldier.
At Oummal we never prioritize showing ourselves through social networking sites, and there is no reason for that, other than knowing that the importance of our role lies in the work we do rather than in showing it. Oummal’s doors are open to everyone, but rather from our keenness and not to Being drawn into the game of “ego“.
However, since we launched our model of electronic communication through this website, it may be right to mention some details about the 1214 experience.
The operative work officially started at two o’clock in the afternoon of the twelfth of February 2021 with only six telephone employees and one supervisor, as by the request of the Ministry of Health in the solicitation. The number of calls received in the first three days of starting work amounted to over 6000 calls. How could six people handle all these calls? With this question, we wrote a letter to the Ministry of Public Health, asking for an increase in the number of our employees, in addition to the necessity of converting the hotline into a free hotline.
Increasing the number of employees was not within the capacity of the Ministry of Public Health, which forced us to secure additional funding and raise the number of agents to 12. This was not the only challenge, we had to design an electronic program dedicated to archiving and documenting cases to the Ministry of Public Health free of charge. We also had to recruit an operation support team to follow up on vaccination centers and answer their questions and follow up with them on a daily basis, all the way to creating electronic forms to enhance citizens’ ability to reach their requirements for an early vaccination exception without the need for communication. All these Challenges enriched our experience and strengthened our role, and made us believe in the “work and perseverance” approach as a constant basis for making any progress.
Now, my dear reader, you have reached the last lines of this story, a story that will definitely not end here.
We intended that this page would not be like its counterparts on other sites. We intended to tell you a story in which we know for sure, that no party can better protect the citizen from the injustice and oppression that befalls him except the “state”.
Our decision at Oummal is to be the shoulder that supports the state, by strengthening the role of its institutions and supporting them wherever and whenever the need. If the need today is for Oummal to be a non-profit association, it will be so, and if the need becomes for it to be a civil non-profit company or any other legal personality, then it will become so, and there are no limits that can prevent us from continuing with what we are doing for our country and our people.
Dear reader,
Nationality is not a word that we adorn with, or a coat we wear when we go out. It is a pattern and a way of life, stemming from our deep belief in our ability to advance our country, and our confidence that no matter how great the crises and the frequency of events in our country, we will not play the role of the victim.
And because the gap is often great between the idea and its practice, between the dream and the reality, between the law and the practice, as Ziyad Rahbani said: “The hungry man who was hungry before the debate started is still hungry after it’s over!”, Oummal decided that it would not be just a thought experiment or an ideological debate. It would work with dedication for the citizen to obtain his right and to live in peace.
Dear reader,
Every time we feel distracted, we stop to ask ourselves, “What do we want?”.
Our school of thought at Oummal, teaches us to turn circumstances into opportunities, and to never play the roles of the victim. We believe that the absolute truth is that hard times will pass, and we must make sure that the time passes in our favor while not leaving for the circumstances a choice to destroy us. If I do not rise, and if you do not rise, and if he does not rise, then who will raise the torch of hope in this darkness?
Finally,
Hope is not a dream, rather it is a lamp to realize dreams. Great hope is always achievable, when the people of principle cling to truth and patience. The secret of success in life is to face its difficulties with the stability of the bird in the storm, for the world always makes way for a person who knows where he is going, and for young men and women at Oummal who have a cause and a goal.
A person without a cause and goal is nothing but a commodity!
With so many thanks that fill the earth with love and generosity.