Nearly a month after suspending operations amid escalating armed group clashes in one of Haiti’s most violence-plagued neighborhoods, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has announced the gradual resumption of full services at the Isaïe Jeanty Maternity Hospital, working in partnership with Haiti’s Ministry of Public Health. The reopening restores 24/7 access to life-saving maternal and reproductive health care for local women, a critical lifeline in a region where basic health services have been largely unreachable for months.
The facility first halted all routine operations on June 19, 2026, after five days of intense armed fighting swept through the Cité Soleil neighborhood. During the unrest, stray bullets struck the maternity ward itself, putting patients, staff and medical providers in immediate, life-threatening danger. In the initial days of the conflict, MSF teams maintained a reduced on-site presence to deliver a minimum level of emergency care. But as violence worsened and security deteriorated rapidly, the organization made the difficult decision to evacuate all remaining staff.
Speaking on the evacuation, Diana Manilla Arroyo, MSF’s Head of Mission in Haiti, noted that the choice to suspend services was not made lightly. “It was a particularly difficult decision, as we know how significant the sexual and reproductive health needs are in Cité Soleil. But continuing under these conditions would have put more lives at risk,” Arroyo explained.
In the weeks that followed the evacuation, a tentative reduction in violent clashes allowed MSF teams to begin a phased return to the facility starting in mid-July. Today, core services are fully operational again, including 24-hour emergency obstetric care, routine maternal health support, and specialized medical care for survivors of sexual violence. Data from the facility shows just how high demand for these services is: in the first six months of 2026 alone, the maternity hospital supported 995 births and provided care to 122 survivors of sexual violence.
Beyond the Isaïe Jeanty Maternity Hospital, MSF continues to operate free health care services across multiple other facilities in Haiti. These include the main Cité Soleil Hospital, the Orezon Health Center in the Brooklyn neighborhood, Tabarre Hospital, and the Pran Men’m Clinic located in Delmas 33, a northern district of Port-au-Prince. For thousands of Haitian people living through ongoing gang violence and systemic health care collapse, the reopening of the Cité Soleil maternity ward marks a rare bit of progress in an otherwise deeply unstable context.