KEY 2023 MEDICAL FIGURES
37,600
emergency room consultations
5,780
people treated for intentional physical violence
4,200
people treated for sexual violence
Politically and economically rooted gang violence continued to rock Port-au-Prince and other areas of Haiti in 2023. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) worked amid the instability to maintain vital healthcare services, including general healthcare and treatment for trauma, burns and sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV).
Our facilities included hospitals in Tabarre and Cité Soleil, a sexual violence and reproductive healthcare clinic in Delmas and an emergency stabilization centre in Turgeau. We supported health centres and operated mobile clinics in some of the most affected neighbourhoods of Port-au-Prince, including Brooklyn, Bel-Air and Delmas 4, and sites where people gathered after fleeing violence. On April 24 alone, close to 50 people with gunshot and knife wounds were admitted to our medical facilities.
MSF teams also provided specialized medical, psychological and social care to survivors of SGBV at our clinics in Port-au-Prince and Gonaïves. A free telephone helpline offered remote psychological support and health centre referrals, increasing access to care. Our mobile clinics in hard-to-reach neighbourhoods also offered care to survivors of SGBV.
The availability of maternal healthcare throughout Haiti – a country with one of the highest maternal death rates in the world – remains extremely limited. In the southwestern town of Port-à-Piment, we reopened a formerly government-run maternity and neonatal hospital, severely damaged by the 2021 earthquake. Our teams rebuilt and upgraded the hospital, which now provides pre- and neonatal care and surgery for patients with obstetric complications.
While MSF’s work is generally respected by communities in Haiti, the volatile security situation impacted our teams in 2023. Critical incidents that endangered our staff and resulted in the deaths of two of our patients forced temporary suspensions of some activities, including suspension of our work in Raoul Pierre Louis hospital in Carrefour in January and the closure of the Turgeau emergency centre in December.
