How would you feel if a loved one fell ill from something as preventable as contaminated water or food? For thousands of Lebanese families, this isn’t a hypothetical question. It’s a reality repeated every year.

Between 2015 and 2023, Lebanon has battled three persistent infectious diseases: Food Poisoning, Typhoid Fever, and Viral Hepatitis A. But what the data reveals is not just infection. It’s inequality. Some regions, especially the North and Beqaa, report recurring outbreaks, while others seem untouched. The truth is not that these diseases vanish across borders, but that our systems fail to capture them equally.

Our team’s dashboard brings these hidden patterns to light. By combining national surveillance data across time, region, and age, we uncovered how outbreaks intensified after 2020–particularly Hepatitis A, which surged sharply in the North. Children and teenagers (0–19 years) bear the greatest burden, showing that the threat targets Lebanon’s youngest and most vulnerable. 

But this isn’t just a story of data; it’s a call to action. Interactive (and more sophisticated dashboards) can serve as early-warning systems, alerting public-health officers when abnormal spikes occur and guiding timely interventions such as water testing, vaccination campaigns, or food-safety inspections. When paired with awareness programs in schools and clinics, data becomes protection.

Lebanon has the expertise. What it needs now is integration. A living, public, and transparent system that keeps health information flowing as fast as disease itself, in hopes that, in those times when everyone can see the pattern, everyone will be able to act on it.