A year ago the United Nations warned that Haiti’s healthcare system was on the verge of collapse, as violent gangs targeted hospitals and clinics for destruction, many of them burned to the ground, vandalized, their staff terrorized. As of today, only an estimated 40% of the country’s hospitals are still functioning, the majority of them in the capital of Port-au-Prince, while gang violence kills or traumatizes more and more victims. Earlier this month, two facilities in metropolitan Port-au-Prince, run by the French charity Doctors without Borders, were forced to close due to the dangerous security situation and threats to staff, shutting down an emergency center and a trauma hospital for three months. The Haitian State University Hospital, which offered free healthcare services, was forced to shut down a few months ago for security reasons.
In December 2024, the Bernard Mevs Hospital in Port-au-Prince, which included a critical trauma center serving the entire country, was burned to the ground, a victim of wanton gang violence that has targeted all healthcare institutions. As reported at the time by Miami’s local 10 News the hospital was burned, abandoned and ransacked Dr. Barth Green, a director of the Miami-based Project Medshare which partnered with the hospital, reported that it “was burned with Molotov cocktails, and the gangsters, who were probably teenagers, went back a second time to ravage what was left. Millions of dollars of medical equipment were destroyed.”
“They’re given these weapons,” Dr. Barth said. “They’re high on drugs, and they do things that are irrational, like burn down the only trauma center where their families and their friends could go to save lives. It’s gone.” The gangs’ destruction of Haiti’s youth, who should be the nation’s future, is as much of a tragedy as the burning down of hospitals.
The University Hospital of Mirebalais, a state-of-the-art 300-bed facility built in 2013 by the Boston-based Partners in Health (PIH) founded by the late Dr. Paul Farmer, is the latest facility forced to close its doors, although it’s not confirmed whether the buildings have yet been physically attacked. The Miami Herald reported April 24 that at the end of March a coalition of gangs stormed the city of Mirebalais, burned down the police station, released 500 prisoners from prison and terrorized the population, displacing thousands. Police have lost control of the city.
The Mirebalais hospital offered free cancer care to women and children, free dialysis and HIV/AIDs treatment which is especially important since USAID cut off funding for that Haitian program. All schools in Mirebalais are closed. Because of the presence of armed gangs, staff can’t safely access hospital grounds to assess the state of the facility, and it has announced that “for now” the hospital will remain closed. That leaves two other hospitals in the area struggling in the central plateau region to handle increasing case loans and grappling with dwindling medical supplies.
