The Pan-Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO) says it has been on the health front­lines in Haiti, car­ing for the vi­o­lence-wracked, dis­placed pop­u­la­tion. 

Ac­cord­ing to PA­HO, since Feb­ru­ary 29, Haiti has faced “an in­ten­si­fied se­cu­ri­ty cri­sis, mark­ing a new stage in the vi­o­lence al­ready im­pact­ing a strug­gling health­care sys­tem, and fur­ther com­pli­cat­ing ac­cess to care for mil­lions of Haitians. 

“As is of­ten the case, the cri­sis has hit the coun­try’s most vul­ner­a­ble the hard­est, in­clud­ing those liv­ing in one of the 84 In­ter­nal­ly Dis­placed Per­sons (IDP) sites of the met­ro­pol­i­tan area of Port-au-Prince, home to around 86,040 peo­ple,” PA­HO said. 

Over the past month, PA­HO said it has been able to re­gain ac­cess to those liv­ing in 22 of the sites, where the or­ga­ni­za­tion has worked since 2022 to sup­port lo­cal health au­thor­i­ties.

At 67, Marie Yliane, a for­mer street sell­er, lives in the Col­bert Lochard site for dis­placed per­sons, a pub­lic school that is now home to al­most 2500 peo­ple. 

Orig­i­nal­ly from the Car­refour-Feuille neigh­bour­hood, PA­HO said Yliane, like many of her neigh­bours, had to flee last Au­gust in the face of the ad­vance of a lo­cal gang. 

“I nev­er had high blood pres­sure be­fore the cur­rent cri­sis,” she told PA­HO. “But the sounds of gun­fire echo in my head. You’re al­ways forced to flee with­out know­ing where to go. 

“The mo­bile clin­ic helped me a lot to­day,” she added. “I was feel­ing un­well and as al­most all the hos­pi­tals are closed, a friend ad­vised me to go. The doc­tors dis­cov­ered that my symp­toms: in­som­nia, headaches, and fa­tigue are due to high blood pres­sure. I re­ceived med­ica­tion and thanked God for this care in these chaot­ic times.”

Af­ter hav­ing ex­haust­ed his sav­ings on hos­pi­tal bills fol­low­ing his in­jury, John, 34 (last name with­held), ac­cord­ing to PA­HO, vis­it­ed the mo­bile clin­ic for a free con­sul­ta­tion and treat­ment. 

“Be­fore the cri­sis, I had a store and a mo­tor­cy­cle,” John, al­so from Car­refour-Feuille, said. “But I lost every­thing when I got shot in the foot by a stray bul­let. “Ban­dits in­vad­ed my neigh­bour­hood, and I was hit by the bul­let while try­ing to es­cape”.

PA­HO said Sab­ri­na, 28 (last name al­so with­held), vis­it­ed the clin­ic due to con­cern about the men­tal health of her two young chil­dren. 

“One of my chil­dren is trau­ma­tized by the sound of au­to­mat­ic weapons and can’t stand them,” she said. “I have to pro­tect him and take him to safe­ty when there is a shoot­ing.”

Re­ac­ti­vat­ed since mid-March, PA­HO said the mo­bile clin­ics have al­ready car­ried out more than 1000 health con­sul­ta­tions in sev­er­al sites in the Port-au-Prince met­ro­pol­i­tan area. 

“They are cru­cial in fa­cil­i­tat­ing ac­cess to health care for dis­placed pop­u­la­tions,” PA­HO said.

Staffed by six doc­tors, 10 aux­il­iary nurs­es, two mid­wives, three psy­chol­o­gists and a dozen psy­choso­cial and com­mu­ni­ty health work­ers, PA­HO said the mo­bile clin­ics pro­vide gen­er­al med­i­cine ser­vices, as well as sex­u­al and re­pro­duc­tive health, and psy­choso­cial con­sul­ta­tions. 

Com­mu­ni­ty health work­ers al­so uti­lize the clin­ics to or­ga­nize aware­ness-rais­ing ac­tiv­i­ties, said PA­HO, adding that it sup­ports the ini­tia­tive through the pro­vi­sion of lo­gis­ti­cal and tech­ni­cal sup­port, as well as through the sup­ply of med­ical prod­ucts.  

“As soon as we were able to re­turn to the sites, our pri­or­i­ty was to dis­trib­ute hy­giene and san­i­ta­tion prod­ucts to peo­ple who had not re­ceived as­sis­tance for sev­er­al days”, said Dr Jean-Gilbert Ndong, co­or­di­na­tor of the PA­HO re­sponse in IDP sites. 

Over­crowd­ed and housed in un­suit­able struc­tures, PA­HO said the IDP sites face con­sid­er­able chal­lenges, in­clud­ing a lack of ac­cess to drink­ing wa­ter and san­i­ta­tion. 

It said these con­di­tions cre­ate a breed­ing ground for the de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of res­i­dents’ health and the po­ten­tial de­vel­op­ment of epi­demics. 

In ad­di­tion to the mo­bile clin­ics, PA­HO said sur­veil­lance ac­tiv­i­ties have al­so been re­launched, thanks to the work of sur­veil­lance and re­sponse teams de­ployed to each camp. 

PA­HO said the aim of this sur­veil­lance is to pre­vent the out­break of dis­eases such as cholera, which has reap­peared in the coun­try since Oc­to­ber 2022.

In ad­di­tion to its sup­port to the health au­thor­i­ties of the Ouest De­part­ment for dis­placed pop­u­la­tions, PA­HO said it has sup­port­ed the Min­istry of Pub­lic Health and Pop­u­la­tion (MSPP) since the be­gin­ning of the cri­sis through lo­gis­ti­cal sup­port to pub­lic hos­pi­tals and oth­er in­sti­tu­tions that con­tin­ue to pro­vide health care in “a com­pli­cat­ed se­cu­ri­ty en­vi­ron­ment.” 

PA­HO said it has al­so pro­vid­ed sev­er­al tons of med­ical sup­plies to var­i­ous fa­cil­i­ties, in­clud­ing the Hôpi­tal Uni­ver­si­taire la Paix and the Médecins Sans Fron­tières hos­pi­tal, which treat most of se­ri­ous­ly in­jured pa­tients. 

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, PA­HO has as­sist­ed the Na­tion­al Blood Trans­fu­sion Pro­gram through the do­na­tion of sup­plies and reagents, and the Na­tion­al Am­bu­lance Cen­ter to en­sure the con­ti­nu­ity of am­bu­lance care and the trans­port of in­jured peo­ple, through the sup­ply of fu­el. 

PA­HO said it is al­so sup­port­ing three pub­lic hos­pi­tals in the field of ma­ter­nal health, pri­mar­i­ly by in­creas­ing ac­cess by re­duc­ing the fi­nan­cial bar­ri­ers to cae­sare­an de­liv­er­ies for women re­quir­ing this pro­ce­dure.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Apr. 25, CMC – 

CMC/nk/kb/2024