Haiti’s health system is “on the verge of collapse,” the UN children’s agency, Unicef, has warned, noting that six out of ten hospitals in the country are barely operational.
“The combination of violence, mass displacement, dangerous epidemics, and increasing malnutrition has bent Haiti’s health system,” said Bruno Maes, Unicef’s representative in the Caribbean nation. However, he emphasized that “the strangling of supply chains may be what breaks it.”
Armed gangs continue to control much of the capital, Port-au-Prince, putting millions of children at risk of disease and malnutrition. The country has faced severe instability since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021, with gangs increasingly dominating large areas.
Currently, as many as 4.4 million people in Haiti urgently need food assistance, and 1.6 million are experiencing emergency levels of acute food insecurity, heightening the risk of child wasting and malnutrition, according to Unicef.
Port-au-Prince’s international airport reopened earlier this week after nearly three months of closure, but Unicef reported it is operating with limited capacity and facing a significant backlog. The situation in the capital is particularly dire, with containers of vital supplies either held up or looted, along with many warehouses and pharmacies.
Reginald Fils-Aimé, director of strategic planning at the Haiti-based NGO Zanmi Lasante, told the BBC that gangs controlling roads to and from the capital severely affect supply chains and all transportation, including that of healthcare staff and patients. He noted that armed groups also control large areas in the central Artibonite department, where his NGO has operated since the 1980s.
“Many essential medicines have been in short supply because most come from outside the country,” Fils-Aimé said. “Recently, there was a shortage of IV fluids, diuretics, blood pressure medicine, and beta-blockers.”
Children and babies living in camps for the internally displaced are particularly vulnerable to non-hygienic environments and water-borne diseases. With the rainy season now started, they are also exposed to vector-borne diseases such as malaria, Fils-Aimé added.
Nadesha Mijoba, country director of the Haitian Health Foundation (HHF), told the BBC that many health services have been closed due to attacks and destruction of infrastructure. For organizations like HHF, the patient load has increased significantly, with patients traveling greater distances at high risk of violence, kidnapping, rape, and even death.
“I have been living and working in Haiti for over 11 years now, and I have never seen the humanitarian situation this catastrophic,” Mijoba said.