Haiti’s health system is now “on the verge of collapse” warned UNICEF’s Representative in Haiti Bruno Maes this week, amidst an alarming decrease in the number of hospitals still functioning in the violence-wracked nation.
In the first three months of the year, the UN said 2,500 people, including at least 82 children, were killed or injured as a result of gang violence. At least 438 persons were kidnapped for ransom during the same period. some 362,000 people – half of them children – have been forced to flee their homes because it’s just too dangerous to remain.
Mr. Maes said that the increased violence along with “mass displacement, dangerous epidemics and increasing malnutrition” has stretched the country’s health system to the limit and the “strangling of supply chains” may fully break it.
More than 30 medical centers and hospitals have shut their doors, including the biggest, L’Hôpital de l’Université d’État d’Haïti, reports MSF.
“According to our health partners, only 20 per cent of health facilities in Port-au-Prince are fully operational,” said the UN Secretary-General spokesperson on 22 May. “The fact that 80 percent of them are not fully operational is due to attacks and looting by armed groups.”
About 4.4 million people in Haiti are in urgent need of food assistance, and 1.6 million people face emergency levels of acute food insecurity, which increases the risk of child wasting and malnutrition. The arrival of the rainy season is expected to worsen the situation, bringing a rise in cases of water-borne disease as well as disease spread by mosquitos, such as malaria.
UNICEF and other humanitarian partners are establishing alternatives to Port-au-Prince’s import and dispatch hubs. These alternative routes have allowed the agency along with the Ministry of Health and international donors and partners, to deliver vaccines, medicine and medical supplies.
Ongoing battle against cholera
The first cholera outbreak in Haiti was inadvertently introduced by UN security forces in October 2010. More than 250,000 cases and 4,000 deaths occurred in the first 6 months of the outbreak, which happened on the heels of a catastrophic earthquake that killed over 200,000 and displaced more than 1 million people. By the end of outbreak years later, more than an estimated 9,000 Haitians had died.
After several years of being cholera-free, in October 2022 cholera cases began cropping up again in Haiti. 82,000 suspected cases have been reported through April 2024, according to UNICEF.
Cholera outbreaks, especially in the setting of a complex humanitarian crisis, can spread rapidly, result in many deaths. Mild cases that are not seen in health care facilities can propagate transmission, making their detection critical for monitoring and controlling transmission.
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This week Kenya recommitted to deploy a United Nations-authorized police force to Haiti to help quell the gang violence that has brought the Caribbean nation to a standstill. But as contractors build a base to host these Kenyan forces, memories of a painful chapter resurface — the U.N.’s calamitous role in sparking a cholera outbreak in Haiti over a decade ago. The parallels today are concerning; Kenya itself is combatting a cholera outbreak reminiscent of the Nepalese cholera outbreak that seeded Haiti’s epidemic in 2010, and it is unclear what guardrails have been placed to prevent or address other public health mistakes. (The Hill)
U.S. tries to downplay role in Haiti, but it’s hard to hide the planes
The mission to be led by Kenya was painstakingly assembled by the Biden Administration, which said from the outset it would neither lead the effort nor provide troops but struggled to find a country willing to take it up. “We concluded that for the United States to deploy forces in the hemisphere just raises all kinds of questions that can be easily misrepresented about what we’re trying to do,” President Biden said Thursday during a news conference with Kenyan President William Ruto. Still, the effort is to be financed, armed and trained largely by the United States. And on the ground right now in Port-au-Prince, the Americans appear to be running the show. (The Washington Post)