October 12, 2016 — Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams are treating people for cholera, injuries and other medical conditions and providing support to medical facilities in the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew in Haiti.
Many communities along the coast in southern Haiti, as well as inland in the Grande Anse department, were very badly affected by the hurricane. These are areas where basic water and sanitation were already insufficient, and health care provision was often weak and under-funded. The health risks now facing local people have greatly increased after the loss of lives and the damage and destruction of homes, health facilities and roads.
In Port-à-Piment, in the South department, an MSF team treated 87 cholera patients on Oct. 11, many of them coming from Chardonnière and from Port-à-Piment. MSF is constructing a 150-bed cholera treatment centre in Port-à-Piment. The MSF team treated a total of 77 people for injuries since first arriving in the town.
In Les Anglais, an MSF team treated people for injuries and treated 16 people for cholera.
In Jérémie, an MSF team treated more than 450 injured patients over three days. MSF is supporting the city’s Saint Antoine Hospital and running a mobile clinic in the area.
In Petit Trou, in Nippes department, two local medical centres were damaged in the hurricane. An MSF mobile clinic has treated about 400 patients so far in Petit Trou and elsewhere in Nippes. The medical conditions included urinary tract infections, hurricane-related injuries, fevers, skin infections and diarrhoea.
In the Artibonite and Northwest departments, MSF is planning to provide tents, beds and medical supplies to medical facilities that were damaged in the hurricane.
MSF is also conducting assessments in the south-east and continuing epidemiological surveillance in the West department and the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area.
MSF teams continue to prioritise reaching areas where needs have not yet been assessed and aid has not yet reached.
In addition, MSF runs multiple projects in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area: the burns unit in Drouillard Hospital, the Martissant 25 emergency center, the Nap Kenbe Emergency Surgical Hospital, the Centre de Référence des Urgences en Obstétrique (CRUO), the Pran Men’m clinic for survivors of sexual and gender-based violence, and the Figaro cholera treatment center that can be operational in a few hours. MSF also supports the Diquini centre for cholera patients.
