Expats fill suitcases with medicine, cash for families in Lebanon

As Lebanon’s crisis deepens, families now depend on expats to bring life-saving medicine, hygiene products, and cash.

Beirut, Lebanon – 23-year-old Hadi Chalhoub emigrated from Lebanon to Atlanta, Georgia, just days after the Beirut Port explosion last August. Almost one year later, the interior architect returned to the crisis-ridden country to see family and friends, his suitcase filled to the brim with painkillers, diabetes medicine, eye drops, and other pills and tablets. “I had to put the meds in small bottles so they all fit,” Chalhoub told Al Jazeera. “It was a huge bag of medicine.”