With Haiti in chaos, a humanitarian crisis is quickly unfolding

Dr. Ronald V. LaRoche has failed to enter dangerous territory to inspect the hospital he runs in Haiti’s Delmas 18 neighborhood since it was looted by gangs last week, but a TikTok video he saw offered clues to the current condition: doing well.

He heard from neighbors and others who dared venture into gang territory that the Jude-Anne Hospital had been looted and stripped of everything of value. It was the second hospital he had to close.

“They took everything: the operating rooms, the X-rays, everything from the labs and the pharmacies,” said Dr. LaRoche. “Proposals! They take windows from hospitals! Doors!”

Haiti is in the grip of an uprising not seen in decades. As politicians in the region scramble to find a diplomatic solution to a political crisis that has left Prime Minister Ariel Henry stranded in Puerto Rico and mobs attacking police stations, a humanitarian disaster is rapidly escalating. Food supplies are threatened and access to water and health care is severely limited.

André Michel, an adviser to the prime minister, said Mr Henry has refused to resign and has demanded that the international community take all necessary measures to ensure his return to Haiti.

Leaders of the United States and the Caribbean have tried to convince Mr Henry that continued power is “unsustainable”. An international security mission led by Kenya has stalled. The United States offered to fund the mission but showed little interest in sending its own troops.

As gangs expand their territory and collaborate in joint attacks on the state, millions of people across the country are caught in the middle. Many are afraid to leave their homes for fear of getting caught in the crossfire. They are hungry. They no longer have clean water and gas. They are desperate.

“Around me everyone is running,” said Dr. LaRoche, who packed up and closed three more medical facilities to prevent more looting. “Women, children and the elderly have bags on their heads and they flee on foot. It’s a war zone.”

Gangs that have spread across the country over the past year joined forces last week to attack state institutions, freeing thousands of prisoners. They are demanding the resignation of Mr. Henry, who was unable to return to Haiti as violence surrounded the airport and grounded all flights.

Due to the chaos, people have to protect themselves as best as possible.

“The biggest fear is stray bullets,” says Nixon Boumba, 42 years old Haiti-based advisor to American Jewish World Service, an international relief and human rights organization.

Last weekend he called the motorcycle taxi driver with whom he regularly goes shopping. “He said to me, ‘I can’t come right now.’ My brother was hit by a stray bullet,” Mr Boumba said.

The driver’s brother was hit in the stomach and is recovering in a hospital. Another friend’s daughter was hit in the jaw by a bullet on the campus of the city’s main public university, he said.

Blondine Tanis, 36, a radio announcer who was kidnapped for ransom in July by people on her street who then sold her to another gang who held her for nine days, said the violence in Haiti was nothing like what she had seen before . She compared it to the 1991 coup that led to three years of military rule, but she was still a baby at the time.

“There are young children on the streets with heavy automatic weapons,” she said. “They shoot people and burn their bodies without remorse. I don’t know how to qualify that. I wonder what happened to this generation. Are they even human?”

Ms. Tanis said she has applied to enter the United States through the Biden administration’s humanitarian parole program.

As the security situation deteriorates, food insecurity also increases. Nearly a million of Haiti’s 11 million residents are on the brink of famine, according to the UN. About 350,000 of them are on the run, living on the streets, in tent cities or in overcrowded schools, as gangs invade their neighborhoods.

Most people now only leave their homes to do essential things, such as going to the bank or buying food and water. They take advantage of the lull in the violence to do their shopping. But experts fear supplies will soon start to dwindle as more and more goods pile up at the port because road transport is too dangerous and gangs have taken over ports.

One person described the scene at a supermarket on Saturday as a “carnival” as so many people queued for hours to stock up on supplies. Zanmi Lasante, a health organization affiliated with Partners in Health who has been working in Haiti for decades, said she has enough fuel to run the generators for about a week.

MSF had to increase the capacity of its hospital beds from 50 to 75 as more and more people without access to the closed public hospital showed up with gunshot wounds. One patient arrived at 3:00 PM for treatment of a gunshot wound from that morning. He died minutes later, said Dr. James Gana, who treats patients and helps run the clinics.

Doctors Without Borders recently reopened an emergency medical clinic in the city center after being closed for several months because gang members took patients from an ambulance and then murdered them in front of the organization’s staff. Blood and oxygen supplies are running low.

“Very soon there will be a shortage of everything,” said Jean-Marc Biquet, head of Doctors Without Borders’ mission in Haiti. “There is no more petrol in the petrol stations. People sell fuel in small buckets, and no one knows where that fuel comes from.”

Without clean drinking water, there is an increased risk of cholera, he said.

Mario Delatour, 68, a filmmaker, said he hasn’t found bottled water in three days. A generous neighbor with a water purification system filled him a 5-gallon bottle Saturday, but he still needs gas for the generator that powers his home. His neighborhood, a relatively safe haven, has been without electricity for three months.

“I have enough fuel for tonight, but I don’t know what tomorrow will be like,” Mr. Delatour said. “I’m a little tense. It’s a damn thing, man.”

Julio Loiseau, a community activist in Port-au-Prince, said groceries spoil quickly when the power goes out, if you can still find them.

“To have bread, you have to queue very early in the morning,” he said. “The only bread factory cannot meet the demand due to the scarcity of supply. My supplies were gone.”

Jean-Martin Bauer, country director in Haiti for the UN World Food Program, noted that the financial situation for many people is particularly precarious because it is too dangerous for people to go outside to work, and many people earn their money on one day. -daily basis.

“What is happening in Haiti is a prolonged episode of mass hunger,” Mr. Bauer said. “This is probably one of the causes of what is going on. We know that hunger is linked to instability and is a breeding ground for conflict, a breeding ground for strife and mass migration.”

Frantz Louis, 35, a security guard waiting for his shift Saturday, said he, like many Haitians, feels like Haiti has “completely collapsed.”

“The best solution for a young person right now is to leave the country,” he said. “If you want to stay in your country and you can’t eat and you can’t go where you want, what other choice do you have?”

Mr Louis said he wondered what the gangs’ end game is. “Do they have an ideology?” he asked.

Robert, a 41-year-old furniture maker from Port-au-Prince who did not want his name published for fear of reprisals, said he was forced to sell his furniture for less than what it cost him to build.

“Sometimes you buy rice and you run out of money to buy vegetable oil and spices, and that’s what happened to me last week,” Robert said from his outdoor workshop. “Now the rice is gone and I have to find another piece of furniture to sell at a low price – and I also need a customer.”

Robert has a wife and two children, a 7-year-old boy and a 15-year-old girl. He avoids even looking at the large wardrobe he built in December and has been unable to sell.

“The day I run out of furniture to sell,” he said, “it will be hunger.”