Stories & News

The surge in conflict in Port-au-Prince has deeply affected the community and seriously disrupted the healthcare system, which is struggling to remain functional.

Haiti's already fragile situation continues to deteriorate, with armed clashes and barricades forcing the closure of many medical facilities and preventing many of those in desperate need of healthcare and basic supplies from reaching that assistance. 

In Haiti, the first mortality survey in more than a decade reveals the extreme levels of violence experienced by people in Cité Soleil, the largest slum area of the capital, Port-au-Prince.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is scaling up its medical activities in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to care for the mounting number of people injured in the chaos that has engulfed the Haitian capital since the February 28 announcement that general elections may be postponed as late as August 2025. 

On Tuesday, 12 December 2023, a group of armed men stopped an MSF ambulance in Port-au-Prince. They took a patient out by force and killed him. MSF is suspending all activities in the Emergency Centre indefinitely.

MSF's Cité Soleil emergency hospital remains the only medical facility capable of treating patients in the area.
 

Dr Lisa Searle is a general practitioner from Tasmania who has built a career with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), completing 11 assignments since 2010.

Day after day, the inhabitants of Haiti’s capital risk being kidnapped, injured or even killed in street clashes between gangs, civilian self-defence brigades and the police.

Gessica Fleurmond’s family knew from early on that she was destined for nursing.

Now, Gessica is a highly experienced intensive care nurse, and she and her colleagues help hundreds of trauma patients each year in Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF)’s Tabarre hospital in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.