Insecurity and Societal Collapse in Haiti--June 25, 2021

 

Haiti is at its nadir now after 217 years of absolute pure misery.

Why do I say this?

Haitians have no security. Their government is not keeping 11 million citizens safe in any fashion.

There are allegedly 80 armed gangs in Port-au-Prince controlling one-third of its 3 million people. And the gangs have big guns and are getting them from somewhere.

The government, the police, the gangs, the business sector, and the people all seem to be waltzing around each other in some sort of weird deadly dance.

And this degree of insecurity has yielded catastrophic dysfunction in all sectors of Haitian society which causes suffering in so many ways.

For example, there is no medical system that functions for the vast majority of Haitians.

The man in the photo above is a cousin of a friend of mine in Port. Two days ago he was involved in a motorcycle accident and sustained fractures and severe lacerations to his left shoulder and face.

The family took him to a hospital but the orthopedic surgeon never showed up to operate due to the unsafe streets.

Yesterday, my Haitian friend called me and I contacted an orthopedic surgeon in another part of Port-au-Prince who accepted the patient. However, the patient and his family would have had to pass through Maritissant on the way to this hospital. They were reluctant to do so due to the extreme danger of the deadly gang lurking there.

So they took the injured man to a third hospital where he was admitted. However, this hospital and surgeon asked for 25,000 Haitian dollars equivalent to about $1,400 US. The family, of course, did not have this amount of money and so Haitian Hearts sent them 500 dollars today. This money was used to pay upfront for his surgery this afternoon.

So his surgery done today was 48 hours late and would not have happened without his indirect connection to an outside source. The absent Haitian medical system and the absent Haitian government had nothing to do with his medical care today except for dangerously delaying it.

A cancer is strangling Haitian society. And the surgeon’s scalpel is not the cure.

John A. Carroll, MD

www.haitianhearts.org