03 Aug 2011

International Activity Report 2010 - Haiti: A year of crisis

Tags: Americas, Haiti, IAR 2010, International Activity Report

On 12 January 2010, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake rocked the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince, and surrounding areas. As many as 220,000 people are estimated to have died, and more than 300,000 were injured. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) mounted its largest ever single emergency response.

© Frederic Sautereau

A surgical team carries out a lifesaving procedure on a young girl in a makeshift operating theatre in Port-au-Prince.

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Thousands of people needed surgery and care for physical trauma. MSF estimated that it had treated more
than 3,000 wounded people in Port-au-Prince by the end of the first week after the earthquake. Many patients needed intensive nursing care after surgery: wound dressing and cleaning, physiotherapy, rehabilitation and mental healthcare. MSF established a post-operative care centre in a former nursery in the capital, and provided similar services in a number of structures around the city as well as in the town
of Léogâne, west of Port-au-Prince. In the capital, an MSF team in Saint Louis hospital focused on the provision of psychosocial and psychiatric care. During the initial emergency phase, MSF provided mental health support to more than 40,000 people.

© Kadir van Lohuizen / NOOR

Mental healthcare is given to patients at the MSF hospital in Léogâne.

© Tristan Pfund /MSF

MSF provides post-operative care, physiotherapy and mental healthcare in its Kindergarten Mickey centre, in Port-au-Prince.

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Prior to the earthquake, maternal mortality rates in Haiti were the highest in the western hemisphere, and MSF focused on maternity care, operating a specialist emergency obstetric hospital in Port-au-Prince. The hospital was destroyed in the earthquake, so MSF offered staff, drugs and expertise to support the Ministry of Health’s Isaïe Jeanty hospital, which treats pregnant women with medical complications. In Léogâne, MSF established a new hospital offering emergency obstetric and trauma care. In 2010, more than 15,000 babies were delivered in facilities supported by MSF.

© Kadir van Lohuizen / NOOR

A father with his newborn at Isaïe Jeanty maternity hospital, Port-au-Prince.

 

© Ron Haviv/VII

Premature babies receive care at Isaïe Jeanty maternity hospital.

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In mid-October, suspected cases of cholera were reported in western Haiti. MSF dispatched a team to the town of Saint Marc who immediately began treating patients in the Ministry of Health hospital. From then until the end of 2010, MSF teams established over 4,000 beds in 47 cholera treatment facilities around the country and treated more than 91,000 of the 171,000 people reported as having cholera nationwide.

© Spencer Platt/Getty Images

MSF medical staff treat cholera patients at a hospital in Saint Marc, where the outbreak began.

© Aurelie Lachant/MSF

MSF’s 600-bed cholera treatment centre in a gymnasium in Cap Haïtien.