Our goal:
PIH must raise $5 million in flexible funding over the next two months to provide essential primary and emergency health care services for the people of Haiti in the midst of ongoing turmoil and dramatically rising costs. Funds raised will be mobilized immediately to respond to the most critical needs, including malnutrition diagnosis and treatment, care for expectant mothers and their children, and both emergency and primary health care.
Context:
The communities served by Zanmi Lasante (ZL)—as Partners In Health (PIH) is known in Haiti—have faced an appalling amount of instability and violence since the assassination of President Jovenel Moise in July 2021 and the unfruitful attempts to form a new Government since then. Now that interim Prime Minister Ariel Henry has stepped down, and gangs control the majority of Port-au-Prince—a situation unheard of in the past three decades—the Haitian people are looking down the barrel of an unprecedented humanitarian crisis.
In recent weeks, Port-au-Prince experienced new waves of attacks on a port, airports, prisons, major police stations, and government buildings, prompting the government to extend a state of emergency and nighttime curfew. All flights in and out of Haiti have been cancelled since March 4, and widespread roadblocks are further hindering the transportation of essential supplies (including food, fuel, and medicine). What was already a crisis is rapidly deteriorating into catastrophe.
Throughout the escalation in violence, ZL has remained a stable presence in the communities we serve, continuing to provide care even as other health facilities have closed their doors. Our 6,500 colleagues in Haiti are astonishingly resilient, and they continue to work heroically to maintain care for some of the sickest and most vulnerable people in Haiti. But the violence and political instability only increase the importance of our mission to provide lifesaving medical care—and the costs of keeping that work going are escalating quickly. We urgently need to raise additional funds to meet the acute needs in Haiti.
How will the Emergency Funds be used?:
Providing Lifesaving Malnutrition Care in an Emergency Setting
Food insecurity continues to rise dramatically in Haiti. A bag of rice can now cost as much as $120, putting food out of reach for many families—if they are even able to find any for sale—and exacerbating an existing wave of malnutrition. Tragically, young children are particularly vulnerable. And today, 4.35 million Haitians are grappling with severe food insecurity.
Even in the face of increased violence, clinicians and community health workers continue to run mobile food clinics throughout communities in the Artibonite region. ZL has seen a decrease in child deaths from malnutrition since launching the mobile clinics, and in March 2023, Hôpital Saint-Nicolas in St. Marc hit a remarkable milestone: no reported child deaths attributed to malnutrition in the previous year. ZL seeks to continue this essential malnutrition care to save Haitian children’s lives.
Caring for Mothers and Their Children
The ongoing instability has devastating effects on women and children’s health. UNICEF estimates that one in two children in Haiti need humanitarian assistance, as of June 2023. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimated that approximately 3 million Haitian women and girls needed humanitarian assistance in 2023. In the wake of the March 2024 escalation in violence, these numbers stand to grow far worse.
Healthy women are best positioned to safeguard their own health and well-being as well as that of their families and communities. And good health at an early age is critical to a child’s ability to thrive. ZL offers a full spectrum of primary and specialty health services at no cost to women and their families. They turn to us for childhood vaccinations, treatment for deadly pediatric diseases, family planning, antenatal care, and much more.
Sustaining Access to Emergency and Primary Health Care for the Most Vulnerable
ZL is Haiti's largest health care provider outside of the government, working in close relationship with the Haitian Ministry of Health. That means we have a tremendous responsibility to the communities that count on us for care.
Whether they need vaccinations, interventions for non-communicable diseases, or treatments for deadly diseases like HIV or TB, ZL is there for them. In 2023 alone, ZL received 895,572 outpatient visits, supported over 15,500 patients with HIV with antiretroviral therapy, and cared for moms and newborns through 19,727 facility-based deliveries.
Given the increase in violence, ZL’s emergency medicine clinicians are also in high demand. Hôpital Universitaire de Mirebalais (HUM) has a sterling reputation for its high quality and reliable Emergency Department, which has the only emergency medicine training program in the country. Patients from across Haiti seek tertiary care at HUM, which was one of only a few hospitals offering tertiary care before the violence—and is now one of the only ones still open.