A medical crisis is looming¹ in eastern Libya with hospitals in Benghazi running short of supplies, the rebels' health minister says.

利比亚反对派卫生部长称，东部班加西地区的医院药品储量不足，即将面临医疗危机。

Stocks of drugs and other items such as surgical² gloves are said to be running out.

Dr Nagi Barakat told the BBC that most emergency aid donated from abroad went straight to the front line.

He said that if a new offensive broke out, hospitals would face a major crisis.

On the cancer ward³ of Benghazi's children's hospital, most patients are not getting the right dosage（剂量） . There aren't enough drugs to go round.

Dr Amina Bayou says she and her colleagues juggle⁴ supplies to give everyone a little.

"We try to divide the drugs between this patient and that patient. It's not good," she said.

"We are treating more than 200 children. We ask parents to go to Egypt to buy medicines and when they bring them back, we divide them up like parcelling（分配，打包） out food."

In one room, a two-year-old called Bubaker lies listlessly（无精打采地） . His leukaemia（白血病） is advanced（晚期的） and he is not responding to treatment, says Dr Bayou, because the dose isn't strong enough.

Next door, six-year-old Melak is doing better. She too has leukaemia and is recovering from a severe lung infection. Doctors found anti-fungal drugs to treat her after a desperate search - the last medicine of its kind in all Benghazi. Without it, she would now be dead.

It is not just cancer drugs that are running out in Benghazi's hospitals.

Dr Barakat, a Libyan doctor who returned from London to take up the post of health minister in the rebels' interim⁵ government, says the situation is critical.

The list of 150 items needed urgently include surgical gloves and gauze（纱布） as well as a whole array of drugs needed for cardiac patients and, critically, in the intensive care units.

At the Hawari General Hospital, director Dr Ezzedin Benomran is at his wits' end.

He reckons（估计） that more than 20 patients have died since February because of the lack of medical supplies.

Stocks of the narcotics⁶（麻醉剂） needed for anaesthetic procedures are so low that the hospital has had to close nine of its 12 operating theatres.

The surgeons only operate on emergency cases - four a day - and many of those are patients with serious gunshot wounds, transferred to Benghazi from the front line in Misrata.