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Lubna H. Izziddin and SANAD: Leading with Compassion

Lubna H. Izziddin and SANAD: Leading with Compassion

A Different Way of Seeing Care

There are few fields of healthcare more misunderstood than palliative care. In Lebanon, where conversations about serious illness and dying have long remained difficult, SANAD has spent the past sixteen years quietly changing that reality.

Palliative care asks one of medicine’s most difficult questions: how do we care for people when cure is no longer possible? Beyond managing symptoms, it seeks to preserve comfort, dignity and quality of life, while supporting families through one of life’s most vulnerable experiences.

Sixteen years ago, home-based palliative care remained largely unfamiliar in Lebanon. People often avoided conversations around serious illness, dying, and end-of-life care, while access to specialized services remained limited. It was within this gap that SANAD, The Home Hospice Organization of Lebanon, was founded.

Inspired by her late mother’s eye-opening and beautiful experience with hospice care in Jordan, Lubna H. Izziddin found her calling in that field of care, and decided to carry this mission to Lebanon, and establish SANAD in 2010, together with a dedicated Board. SANAD grew from a simple but profound conviction: that every person deserves compassionate, holistic care and the opportunity to remain surrounded by the people and places that matter most.

Today, SANAD stands as Lebanon’s leading provider of free of charge home-based hospice and palliative care. What began as a response to an unmet national need has grown not only into a source of service provision, but also a recognized source for education, research, advocacy and collaboration, helping shape the future of palliative care both within Lebanon and across the Arab region.

SANAD : A Foundation in Human Development

Behind Lubna’s journey lies a career devoted not only to healthcare, but to human rights and social development.

Long before founding SANAD, Lubna had spent decades working across the fields of social development, youth empowerment and institutional capacity building. With academic foundations in mental health, counselling, gender and development, her work consistently focused on strengthening communities, advancing human rights and helping institutions create lasting social impact.

Over more than thirty years, she collaborated with governments, United Nations agencies and civil society organizations throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Her experience with organizations including UNICEF, UNESCO, UNDP, UNFPA, UNODC, Mercy Corps, Save the Children and others exposed her to human rights-based social development approaches and systems, which she later utilized in her leadership of SANAD.

Rather than viewing palliative care solely as a medical service, SANAD was designed around the understanding that serious illness affects every dimension of life. Clinical care therefore exists alongside psychological support, family counselling, caregiver guidance and compassionate accompaniment, delivered by interdisciplinary teams within the familiarity of patients’ own homes.

This approach challenged prevailing assumptions about healthcare in Lebanon. It placed dignity alongside treatment, recognized families as partners in care, and demonstrated that quality of life remains meaningful regardless of prognosis.

SANAD ’s Growth and Sustainability

Over the past sixteen years, SANAD has cared for nearly 3,000 patients and their families, providing services free of charge regardless of nationality, religion, gender or diagnosis. Throughout periods of profound national uncertainty, including the pandemic, economic collapse, political instability and armed conflict, the organization continued to adapt, ensuring that patients remained connected to care when they needed it most.

As SANAD matured, anchored by a solid leadership and evolving with a team of highly skilled and committed members, its role naturally expanded beyond direct patient care.

The experience gained through clinical practice created opportunities to educate healthcare professionals, contribute to research, and advocate for the integration of palliative care into healthcare systems. The organization has developed training programmes, participated in regional and international research initiatives, collaborated with universities and hospitals, and worked alongside ministries and international partners to strengthen the palliative care field.

What began as a national organization gradually became one of the regional points of reference.

Through partnerships across Jordan, Qatar, Kuwait, Sudan and other countries, SANAD has supported the development of palliative care services, shared technical expertise and contributed to building local capacity. In doing so, it has demonstrated that knowledge developed in Lebanon can meaningfully inform healthcare systems throughout the region.

Recognition Through Impact

Recognition followed, not as an objective, but as a reflection of sustained impact.

In 2023, SANAD received the European Association for Palliative Care Leadership Award, acknowledging its contribution to advancing palliative care through service development, education and leadership. Lubna has also shared her experience through international conferences, professional associations, TEDx Beirut and academic institutions, contributing to broader conversations about end of life care, leadership and social development.

Yet neither the awards nor the public recognition fully explain SANAD’s significance. Its greatest contribution may be the quiet transformation of how palliative care is understood.

A Lasting Legacy

Through years of patient care, public awareness, professional education and advocacy, SANAD has helped shift the conversation away from the misconception that palliative care is about giving up, and towards the understanding that it is about living as fully, comfortably and meaningfully as possible, even in the presence of serious illness.

That change extends beyond healthcare. It speaks to how societies approach vulnerability, caregiving, grief and human dignity itself. And adds a significant angle to healthcare systems which are often measured by infrastructure and clinical outcomes. The angle being that some of their most enduring achievements are harder to quantify: a patient who is able to remain at home, a family that feels supported through loss, or a conversation that replaces fear with understanding.

Over the past sixteen years, SANAD has shown that these moments are not secondary to healthcare; they are the core of it.

Through the organization she leads, Lubna H. Izziddin has contributed to a lasting shift in the way palliative care is understood in Lebanon and across the region. Long after individual milestones fade, that commitment to dignity may prove to be her most enduring legacy.