and the men s all around gymnastics. the united states, some biles, pulls out of another event blaming the testes, when gymnasts lose their sense of awareness in the air. let s turn to lebanon. this once vibrant and prosperous country used to be known as the paris of the middle east. but now it s in the grips of one of the world s worst economic crises with half the population living in abject poverty. medicine, electricity and fuel are all scarce. and the world bank says three issues are to blame: a financial crisis, covid 19 and the port of beirut explosion. we ll take you through them now. we ll start with the currency. the lebanese pound it s in free fall. in 1997 it was pegged to the dollar at the rate of 1,500 to one, and that remained the case until october 2019. that s the year the country slid into an economic crisis.
owes $600 million in debts to suppliers. and they ve gradually stopped importing drugs over the past few months. there are shortages in most essential drugs including those to treat heart disease, cancers and pain medication. here s the impact of that from one doctor in the country s largest public hospital. last week, a woman came, she was pregnant, she had hypertension from the pregnancy, and she lost her baby. because we don t have magnesium. and magnesium costs like two or 3 cents. the world food programme has warned that the crisis has pushed vulnerable families and refugees further into poverty. lebanon has the largest number of refugees per capita in the world. around a quarter of the population, many coming from neighbouring syria. it s estimated that 1.2 million of those are food insecure, but camps such as this one which was established in beirut for palestinian refugees is now becoming home for lebanese people who have lost everything.
are having to live through. here s the bbc s gabriel gatehouse on how the government reacted to those protests when the crisis first took hold. the interesting thing about lebanon is that the leaders spend most of their time politically at odds with each other, grappling over cabinet positions, who controls what ministry, etc, but when the system itself is threatened as it was in 201990s etc, but when the system itself is threatened as it was in 2019 these protests started and peoples came out united to demand change, the politicians are closed ranks. they put the military and the militias out on the street. and then you may remember this this explosion in august last year in the beirut port. over 200 people died, thousands were injured. large parts of the city were decimated. and they re yet to be rebuilt. you can see the remaining impact of the blast here. the blast has been blamed on thousands of tonnes of ammonium nitrate which was stored incorrectly in a warehouse. the crisis in
main cabinet positions. also, there is a lot of talk about what will happen to the forensic audit of the central bank and also of ministries, comprehensive forensic products which has been demanded by many. will there be an agreement before hand on what the government policy is going to be about that because mike and other issues as well. simply by saying this will only be a government for but the prime minister to basically manage the elections next year, but he himself has said that he does not want to just do that. he wants to resolve the immediate life he had issues facing the lebanese people. he has also mentioned quite mysteriously external guarantees that he will have some kind of support from outside lebanon until at least dated a very basic minimum required to