PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — On a recent morning at a hospital in the heart of gang territory in Haiti’s capital, a woman began convulsing before her body weakened as a doctor and two nurses rushed to save her.
They placed electrodes on his chest and turned on an oxygen machine while keeping his eyes on a computer screen that reflected a dangerously low oxygen level of 84%.
Nobody knew what was happening to him.
Even more worrying is that the Doctors Without Borders hospital in the poor neighborhood of Cité Soleil was running out of key medications to treat seizures.
“We barely have the medications she really needs,” said Dr. Rachel Lavigne, a physician with the medical aid group.
It is a familiar scene repeated daily in hospitals and clinics in Port-au-Prince, where life-saving medicines and equipment are dwindling or absent entirely as brutal gangs tighten their control over the capital and beyond. They blocked roads, forced the closure of the main international airport in early March and paralyzed operations at the country’s largest seaport, where containers full of key supplies remain stuck.
“Everything is falling apart,” Lavigne said.
Haiti’s health system has long been fragile, but is now on the brink of total collapse after gangs launched coordinated attacks on February 29 against critical infrastructure in the capital and beyond.
The violence has forced the closure of several medical institutions and dialysis centers, including Haiti’s largest public hospital. Located in central Port-au-Prince, the Haiti State University Hospital was due to reopen on April 1 after being closed when the attack began, but gangs have infiltrated it.
One of the few institutions that still functions is the Peace University Hospital, located south of the closed airport. From February 29 to April 15, the hospital treated about 200 patients with gunshot wounds and its beds remain full.
“We urgently need fuel because we operate with generators. Otherwise we risk closing our doors,” hospital director Dr. Paul Junior Fontilus said in a statement.
More than 2,500 people were killed or injured across Haiti from January to March, an increase of more than 50% compared to the same period last year, according to a recent UN report.
Even if a hospital is open, there are sometimes little or no medical staff because gang violence breaks out daily in Port-au-Prince, forcing doctors and nurses to stay home or turn around if they find roads blocked and manned. by heavily armed men.
The spiral of chaos has left a growing number of patients with cancer, AIDS and other serious illnesses with little or no recourse, and gangs have also looted and burned pharmacies in the center of the capital.
Doctors Without Borders has run out of many medications used to treat diabetes and high blood pressure, and asthma inhalers to help prevent deadly attacks are not available in the capital, Lavigne said.
At the Doctors Without Borders hospital, medical staff recently tried to save a child suffering from a severe asthma attack by giving him oxygen, he said. That didn’t work, nor did any other type of medication. Finally, they ended up injecting him with adrenaline, which is used in emergencies to treat anaphylactic shock.
“We improvise and do the best we can for the people here,” Lavigne said.
People’s health is worsening because the daily medications they need for their chronic illnesses are not available, warned Médecins Sans Frontières project coordinator Jacob Burns.
“It gets serious and then they run out of options,” he said. “For certain people, there are very, very few options right now.”
Despite the pressing need for medical care, the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Cité Soleil has been forced to reduce the number of outpatients it sees daily from 150 to 50, Burns said, although all emergencies are handled.
Dozens of people line up outside the hospital every day and risk being shot by gang members who control the area while they wait for medical attention.
Everyone can enter the hospital premises, but the medical staff established a classification to determine which 50 people will be treated. Those with less urgent needs are asked to return another day, Burns said.
On Friday morning, Jean Marc Baptiste, 51, shuffled to the emergency room with a bloody bandage on his right hand. He said police in an armored vehicle shot him the day before while he was collecting wood to sell as firewood in a gang-controlled area.
Once inside, the nurses removed the bandage to reveal an open wound on his thumb as he screamed in pain. Lavigne told her that she needed a plastic surgeon, which the hospital does not have, and she ordered x-rays to make sure there was no fracture.
On average, Cité Soleil hospital treats three injured people a day, but now it sometimes reaches 14, staff said.
Recently, five people wounded by gunshots arrived at the hospital after spending the entire night inside a public bus that couldn’t move because of intense gunfire, Burns said.
“Cité Soleil was for a long time the epicenter of violence,” he said. “And now violence is so widespread that it is becoming a problem for everyone.”