Rita Boustani
Daily Star staff

Social Affairs Minister Asaad Diab said Tuesday that social justice and stability are needed to achieve sustained social development and improved healthcare services.
“Security and political stability have been achieved, but this achievement cannot be complete or permanent unless it is accompanied by progress on the social and health levels,” Diab said on behalf of President Emile Lahoud at the third annual conference for the Confederation of Health Mutual Funds at the UN House in Beirut.
Present were Metn MP Antoine Haddad, representing Speaker Nabih Berri, Minister of State Michel Musa, who represented Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and Agriculture Minister Ali Hassan Khalil.
Diab said only social development that guaranteed health, education and social assistance and expanded
social security could achieve social peace.
He stressed the need to make every effort to revive the middle class ­ “the pillar of social stability” ­ limit poverty, and reduce immigration and illiteracy.
The minister said successful social and health sectors needed planning, knowledge and dedication, and called for rationed spending in the health sector and coordination between the concerned parties.
He urged participants to come up with a plan for health and social development.
Diab also said reform was not an individual effort, but rather the “collective work” of governmental authorities, NGOs and civil society.
Diab added that the future would no longer be monopolized by the authorities but is in the hands of civil society and the government sector.
Diab also praised the confederation’s work for “national belonging, rather than sectarianism, sustained development rather than regional belonging, methodology rather than arbitrary patterns.”