The organization Doctors Without Borders (MSF) announced this Wednesday, October 15, the permanent closure of its emergency center based in the center of Port-au-Prince, “given the intensification of insecurity” in this part of the Haitian capital.
“For several weeks now, the surroundings of downtown Port-au-Prince have become the scene of regular armed violence,” the NGO announced in a press release informing of the permanent closure of the Turgeau emergency center.
“Too dangerous to treat”
The facility, as well as the Carrefour trauma hospital, in the southwest of the city, remain closed since a “targeted” attack against an MSF medical convoy last March.
The Turgeau building was “hit several times by stray bullets due to its location near combat zones, which would make the resumption of activities too dangerous for both patients and staff,” Jean-Marc Biquet, head of the MSF mission in Haiti, explained in the press release.
MSF, which “deeply regrets this difficult decision taken as a last resort”, emphasizes that it will have “a significant impact on access to health care for a population already greatly affected by violence, instability and increasingly precarious living conditions.”
Long plagued by criminal gangs, accused of murders, rapes, looting and kidnappings, in a context of political instability, the poorest country in America has experienced a resurgence of violence since mid-February.
To try to stop the abuses of the gangs that control almost the entire capital and help an overwhelmed Haitian police, the United Nations Security Council last month validated the creation of an anti-gang force, which will succeed the Multinational Security Mission (MMAS).
An essential center, which had welcomed more than 100,000 patients
This force created in 2023 and led by Kenya has obtained more than mixed results due to a lack of sufficient equipment and financing and with a staff of only one thousand agents out of the expected 2,500.
Established in 2006 in Martissant and moved to Turgeau in 2021 for security reasons, the MSF Emergency and Referral Center, which employed 206 people, treated more than 100,000 patients of all ages between 2021 and March 2025, “thus demonstrating its vital role among the capital’s vulnerable populations,” MSF underlines.
Despite this closure and the continued suspension of activities at the Carrefour hospital, MSF, present in Haiti for 30 years, affirms that it continues its activities “without rest” in several health facilities in the capital.
Source: BFM TV
