Haiti extends state of emergency as health care nears ‘collapse’

Haiti's government on Thursday said it would extend a state of emergency around Port-au-Prince for another month following a wave of gang violence.

Haiti’s government on Thursday said it would extend a state of emergency around Port-au-Prince for another month following a wave of gang violence that has threatened to bring down the government and led thousands to flee their homes.

The U.N. humanitarian affairs agency on Thursday warned that the country’s health system was “nearing collapse,” with shortages of staff, equipment, beds, drugs and blood to treat patients with gunshot wounds.

Two dozen trucks carrying vital equipment, medical supplies and food were stuck at the capital’s port, according to the U.N.’s World Food Programme (WFP), which said it had suspended its maritime transport service, citing the “insecurity.”

Authorities first announced a state of emergency on Sunday after fighting escalated, inmates were broken out of prison by armed gangs, and an estimated tens of thousands were displaced while Prime Minister Ariel Henry was in Kenya, seeking its leadership of an international force intended to fight the gangs.

The state of emergency in the Ouest Department, the seat of the capital, will be extended to April 3, with a nightly curfew until March 11, according to a declaration in the Caribbean country’s official gazette. The government said this was in order to “reestablish order and take appropriate measures to retake control of the situation.”

The state of emergency bans all public protests, day and night, and allows security forces to use “all legal means” at their disposal to enforce the curfew and apprehend those who break it, the government said, adding emergency services, security forces and some journalists will be exempt from curfew.

Henry has been in Puerto Rico since Tuesday, apparently unable or unwilling to return to the capital, where gunfire has broken out around key transport hubs, including the international airport. The U.S. has been pushing him to “expedite” a political transition.

Aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF, or Doctors Without Borders) said on Thursday it estimated that at least 2,300 people had been killed in the violence in 2023 in the Port-au-Prince neighbourhood of Cite Soleil alone, home to nine per cent of the capital’s population.