The NGO made the decision as heavily armed gangs, which control more than half of Haiti’s territory, have recently increased kidnappings for ransom and murders.
The non-governmental organization Doctors Without Borders (Médecins sans frontières, MSF) announced on Friday that it had suspended its operations at a hospital in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince, after armed men invaded and violently grabbed a patient before executing him just a few meters away.
“They took a bullet-wounded patient out of the emergency room and executed him in cold blood with a bullet to the head,” the NGO said in a press release it released.
The tragic incident, which unfolded yesterday evening Thursday, was the second of this nature in six months at this particular hospital, in a suburb of the Haitian capital, not far from areas fully controlled by the gangs.
“Since we cannot guarantee the safety of our patients or our teams, we cannot continue to work” in this particular health structure, MSF’s head of mission in Haiti, Benoit Vasseur, told AFP.
“It’s sad, but there are times when you no longer have a choice: the dead doctor can’t heal,” he explained.
Present for over thirty years in the impoverished Caribbean country, the NGO is often the only option for providing medical care for hundreds of thousands of Haitians who cannot afford private clinics or hospitals.
The discontinuation of MSF services at this hospital, in the Carrefour community in the western part of the capital, means that there will be no emergency department, which offers quality services free of charge to 800,000 people, Mr Vasseur stressed.
Heavily armed gangs, which control more than half of Haiti’s territory, have recently increased kidnappings for ransom and murders.
On Wednesday, gang members killed six police officers in repeated attacks on a police station in the north of the country.
Health centers are not safe havens. Four of the officers killed on Wednesday had been wounded earlier in the day before they were “taken out” of the clinic where they were being cared for by gang members “to be executed”, police said.
Despite the orgy of violence, MSF assured that it does not intend, for the time being at least, to withdraw its mission from the country. Mr. Vasser pointed out that the organization has “excellent” acceptance by the population and other factors and “thanks to this” it can continue its activity.
RES-EMP
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