Dakar, February 14, 2024 – The humanitarian scenario in Haiti is alarming. The World Health Organization (WHO) lately described it because the worst disaster within the Americas in 2024 [1]. ALIMA (The Alliance for International Medical Action) is among the few worldwide medical humanitarian NGOs to function in Haiti, and may attest to the intense severity of this disaster.

“In Port-au-Prince, the majority of health facilities are dysfunctional. Two days after ALIMA visited the last private hospital in Cité Soleil district, the hospital was attacked and looted by a gang, forcing an emergency evacuation of patients. In the only public hospital left in the district, everything is lacking—drinking water, electricity, equipment, medicines, and staff,” mentioned Dr. Rodrigue Alitanou, emergency supervisor at ALIMA .

ALIMA’s arrival has been eagerly awaited by the nation’s well being authorities. As an skilled in emergency response, ALIMA will play a important position in addressing the cholera outbreak. According to studies, Haiti is grappling with a cholera epidemic that reemerged in October 2022. There had been greater than 70,000 suspected instances and greater than 1,000 deaths reported on the finish of final yr. To deal with this well being problem, ALIMA will present take care of sufferers and lift consciousness by working schooling and communication campaigns on the institutional and neighborhood ranges.

ALIMA’s cell clinics are additionally set to develop into operational, aimed toward providing main care to internally displaced folks. Additionally, specialists will supply emergency obstetric and neonatal care within the maternity ward of the Chancerelles hospital in Cité Soleil. For over a yr, a majority of girls have been giving start exterior well being services, with out medical help.

Care will start within the communes of Cité Soleil, Tabarre and Port-au-Prince, after which embody those of Carrefour and Croix de Bouquet.

For a number of years, Haiti’s capital has been ravaged by violence and poverty. The scenario deteriorated quickly and reached an alarming degree in 2023, motivating a UN-backed worldwide safety mission. While the mission is gradual to deploy, the inhabitants continues to endure from gang violence. In 2023, violence claimed the lives of 5,000 folks, together with greater than 2,700 civilians [2]. More than 310,000 folks had been compelled to flee their houses in response to a UN report printed in January—double the quantity of people that fled their houses in 2023 and not less than 15 occasions greater than in 2021.

This escalation of violence is drastically hampering the flexibility of well being authorities and organizations to offer an emergency response. According to forecasts, greater than 5.5 million folks will want humanitarian assist and safety in 2024, i.e., nearly half the inhabitants [3]. Because accessing sufferers will pose a possible problem, ALIMA will depend on its examined and true mannequin of alliance and associate with a Haitian NGO to offer medical companies to the hardest-hit areas. This collaboration will improve the capability to offer pressing and emergency care, develop and assist schooling campaigns and epidemiological surveillance, and strengthen total response to this humanitarian disaster.

This emergency mission in Haiti displays the core id of ALIMA: offering care the place nobody goes and guaranteeing the effectiveness of its actions in the long run.

1. Health Emergency Appeal 2024, WHO, January 25, 2024

2. Report by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, January 23, 2024

3. OCHA, 2023

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Mélanie Blond
Communication director
Twitter : @ALIMA_ORG
Email : melanie.blond@alima.ngo