A deepening humanitarian crisis is unfolding in Haiti’s most densely populated urban neighborhood after international medical aid organization Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières, MSF) announced the full suspension of life-saving services at the Isaïe Jeanty Maternity Hospital, a key healthcare facility serving the Cité Soleil area of Port-au-Prince. The shutdown, which took effect on the morning of June 19, comes after more than a week of escalating violent clashes between rival armed groups that have turned the surrounding district into a combat zone.
Tensions began to spike on the night of June 13-14, when open fighting erupted across three adjacent neighborhoods: Belekou, Fort-Dimanche, and Quai Jérémie. The violence quickly spilled over into the Chancerelles neighborhood, where the MSF-supported maternity hospital is located. Stray gunfire has repeatedly struck the hospital’s outer walls, sending waves of panic through the local population and forcing hundreds of residents to flee their homes in search of safety. By the evening of June 15, more than 100 displaced people, the majority women and children who escaped the fighting, had taken shelter within the hospital compound, where MSF teams were able to provide them with clean drinking water. One of those displaced was a woman who suffered a leg wound from a stray bullet while on hospital grounds; MSF medics provided immediate on-site treatment, while additional casualties from the clashes were treated at MSF’s separate medical facility in the Tabarre district of the capital.
Local authorities were the first to suspend their operations at the site on the morning of June 16, after fighting intensified further. MSF teams remained on location for three additional days, working with reduced staffing to deliver emergency care, stabilize injured and pregnant patients, and arrange transfers to other functioning medical facilities across Port-au-Prince. As the security situation continued to deteriorate, however, MSF made the difficult decision to evacuate all remaining staff and shut down all hospital activities permanently for the time being.
Speaking on the suspension, Nicolas Tessier, MSF’s Head of Mission in Haiti, described the impossible conditions medical teams had been working under. “We have tried to provide a minimum level of lifesaving support to people with a reduced team and limited capacity,” Tessier explained. “We treated several women who managed to reach the maternity hospital despite the insecurity, including one who gave birth to twins. But today we can no longer continue: the hospital is riddled with bullet holes, our teams are exhausted, and it has become extremely difficult for ambulances to refer patients and find facilities able to receive them.”
The shutdown of the facility has pushed an already catastrophic healthcare situation in Cité Soleil over the edge. The neighborhood is home to roughly 300,000 residents, and even before the latest wave of violence, access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive healthcare was already extremely limited across the area. Thousands of pregnant women had already been forced to deliver babies at home in unsafe, unsanitary conditions, dramatically raising their risk of life-threatening obstetric complications. With the Isaïe Jeanty hospital now closed, access to such care has become virtually non-existent, leaving local women with almost no viable options to get safe medical treatment.
This is not the first time MSF has been forced to halt services in the area due to gang violence. Back in May, the organization suspended operations at its general hospital in Cité Soleil, located just a few kilometers from the maternity facility. As gang-related violence continues to spread and security conditions worsen across the region, the entire local healthcare system is now at risk of total collapse. MSF has issued an urgent call for armed groups to respect international humanitarian law, protect civilian lives and infrastructure, and allow medical teams unimpeded access to treat people in desperate need of care.