Unrest forces MSF to shut Haiti health facility for good
The medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said
Wednesday that it was permanently closing an emergency health centre in Haiti's
capital, due to rampant insecurity.
MSF, which had temporarily closed the Turgeau health centre in the heart of Port-au-Prince in March following attacks, said it would not be reopening the facility.
"MSF deeply regrets this difficult decision, which was taken as a last resort," Jean-Marc Biquet, who heads the MSF mission in Haiti, said in a statement.
The poorest country in the Americas, Haiti has been ravaged by violent criminal gangs that commit murders, rapes, looting, and kidnappings against a backdrop of chronic political instability.
More than 16,000 people have been killed in armed violence in Haiti since the start of 2022, while half the country's population needs humanitarian aid, the United Nations said last month.
The situation has become particularly dire in the capital.
MSF temporarily closed the Turgeau emergency centre in March as the frontline fighting "advanced dangerously close".
As it carried out an evacuation from Turgeau to the Carrefour Trauma Centre, on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, its clearly marked convoy was "deliberately targeted", it said at the time.
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MSF then also suspended its operations at the Carrefour hospital.
Biquet pointed out that for several weeks, "the area surrounding the centre of Port-au-Prince has been the scene of regular armed violence".
"If medical activities were to resume at (the Turgeau) hospital, located in the immediate vicinity of these clashes, they would be severely compromised by the level of risk to patients and healthcare workers," he said.
Biquet said "the building has already been hit several times by stray bullets due to its location close to the combat zones, which would make resuming activities too dangerous for both patients and staff".
He acknowledged that the closure would have "a significant impact on access to healthcare for a population already severely affected by violence, instability, and increasingly precarious living conditions".
But, he stressed, MSF remained "fully committed" and was "actively exploring all alternatives to maintain our medical support in Port-au-Prince and Carrefour".
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