Tabarre
Tabarre Hospital is located near the airport, northeast of the city center. It has five operating theaters and provides specialized care for trauma and burns patients. Its bed capacity was increased by 50 percent in March—from 50 to 75 beds—to be able to admit an increasing number of patients. During the first week of March, the hospital received an average of 15 new patients a day; the number of new arrivals has since decreased to four or five patients each day and the hospital is now able to work with a few spare beds for newly arrived patients.
Carrefour
Carrefour is a city just southwest of Port-au-Prince. It used to be a suburb of the capital, but it’s been cut off from Port-au-Prince since 2021, when gangs overtook the neighborhood of Martissant, which connects the two cities. In Carrefour, MSF converted an old textile factory into a new trauma hospital, which opened on March 4 and received 22 patients within the first 48 hours, including victims of road traffic accidents and violence. Carrefour has also received referred patients from other medical structures in Carrefour that couldn’t be referred to hospitals in Port-au-Prince.
Drouillard
MSF’s “Drouillard” hospital in Cité Soleil provides emergency and outpatient care for the community of Port-au-Prince's largest slum. Activities here have been relatively unaffected by the recent instability, in part due to its location (the area is a stronghold of some of the main gangs, but they put their rivalry on hold to form a coalition against the authorities) and in part due to the services offered there, which are not focused on trauma. The hospital is also experiencing challenges in terms of supplies, as are most other facilities in the city. Out of precaution, however, our outreach activities in Cité Soleil have been put on hold.
Turgeau
Turgeau Emergency Center had suspended all activities after a violent incident in December 2023, during which a patient was taken from an ambulance, and killed in the streets. The center reopened on March 6, two weeks earlier than foreseen, to accommodate the influx of patients in other locations, and received 15 patients on its first day of opening. In the following days, Turgeau received 30 to 45 patients daily.
Pran Men’m
Pran Men’m, our clinic for survivors of sexual and gender-based violence, remains open and is the only free, 24/7-accessible clinic of its kind in Port-au-Prince. Between March 11 and 16, we admitted 15 sexual violence survivors, which is a reduction from about 60 per week in the prior weeks. This raises concerns that many survivors do not feel safe coming for care, as we saw the last time violence increased.
Mobile clinics
Due to the volatile situation, MSF was forced to temporarily suspend our mobile medical clinics in camps for displaced people and in three fixed sites in neighborhoods particularly affected by violence and where no other medical actors are present (Bel-Air, Bas-Bel-Air, and Delmas 4). The mobile clinics at these fixed sites typically carried out around 140 medical consultations per day. MSF mobile clinics in camps for displaced people carried out about 110 consultations per day during visits in January 2024.
Supplies and the risk of stock ruptures
MSF has been facing a major supply issue that could result in our hospitals running out of medical supplies with grave consequences on our ability to ensure the continuity of care.
Our incoming cargo containing much-needed supplies spent several months in customs at the city port prior to the latest outburst of violence. Just as the supplies were going to be cleared from customs, violence erupted, preventing their final clearance and delivery to MSF facilities. The situation is uncertain at the moment, though the port seems to be accessible again and we are hoping to have final authorization to pick up our supplies and ship them urgently to our hospitals. This is our priority and we are urging the authorities to expedite the procedure.
Medical care in a city in crisis
The current unrest and insecurity in Port-au-Prince follows years of escalating tensions. Before reopening this month, our emergency center in Turgeau temporarily closed following the killing of a patient in an MSF ambulance leaving the facility in December 2023. Our hospital in Tabarre had to temporarily suspend activities after a violent intrusion in July 2023, before fully reopening in August. Our hospital in Cité Soleil was also forced to temporarily close several times due to security incidents and violent clashes in the first half of 2023.
Following the announcement of an increase in fuel prices in September 2022, violent protests broke out across the country. Barricades were erected, cutting off many of the main roads, and economic activity ground to a halt. The situation was compounded when one of the major gangs blocked access to the country’s main oil terminal for more than a month, exacerbating fuel shortages and forcing health care facilities to close or reduce services, as they depend on generators to produce electricity.
Unrest also disrupted the water distribution network, reducing supply and creating ideal conditions for the resurgence of cholera.
Sexual and gender-based violence
Sexual and gender-based violence is widespread in Haiti and MSF has provided care for an increasing number of survivors in recent years. MSF runs two clinics, one in Port-au-Prince and another further north in Gonaïves, providing survivors of sexual violence with comprehensive care, including medical care and psychosocial support. A free telephone helpline has decreased barriers to care, offering remote psychological support and referrals to health centers. Our mobile clinics operating in unsafe, hard-to-reach neighborhoods include sexual violence care in their services. In 2023, we provided care to more than 4,000 survivors of sexual and gender-based violence in Haiti.
Maternal health
The provision and accessibility of maternal health care is extremely limited in Haiti, contributing to one of the highest maternal death rates in the world. Our activities in the south of the country aim to respond to the pressing needs in this area. In 2022, we expanded our sexual and reproductive health activities at our clinic in Port-à-Piment, in Haiti’s southwest, and started to provide surgery for complicated obstetric cases, as well as prenatal and neonatal care.
Emergency responses to cholera
Overcrowded, unsanitary living conditions and poor access to clean water were factors in a major resurgence of cholera, a disease that has killed around 10,000 people in Haiti following the 2010 earthquake.
After several years without a recorded case of cholera, MSF facilities began to receive new patients with suspected cholera in September 2022, which marked the beginning of a resurgence of the outbreak. We carried out an emergency response in multiple areas of Port-au-Prince and the Artibonite region, providing care to 29,449 cholera patients and carrying out prevention measures, such as chlorinating water points. By the end of August 2023, cases declined but did not disappear altogether. We closed our last cholera treatment center while continuing health promotion and water and sanitation activities.