The local staff of a dozen hospitals with deep ties to Harvard Medical School are still providing crucial health care to some of Haiti's most vulnerable people during the current escalating violence, political chaos, and crushing economic downturn that has led to a state of emergency in the island nation, according to Joia Mukherjee, associate professor of global health and social medicine in the Blavatnik Institute at HMS.
- By JAKE MILLER
Borders in Haiti are closed, ports occupied, airports under attack, and main roads blocked, leading to severe shortages of food, water, fuel, and medicine. The United Nations says more than 5 million Haitians need humanitarian assistance because of displacement, famine, and other privations.
Harvard Medicine News spoke with Mukherjee - who is also chief medical officer for Partners In Health, a global health care equity organization founded in Haiti four decades ago by the late Paul Farmer - about the long-term collaboration between HMS, PIH, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Haiti's Ministry of Health and the lessons the world can learn from Haiti about how to provide health care in times of crisis.
Harvard Medicine News: How would you describe what's happening in Haiti right now?
Mukherjee: We want people to understand two things. First, the level of urgency: There is a tremendous need for humanitarian assistance in Haiti right now.
This is the worst violence we've seen in the 40 years that we've been working in Haiti. Most of the violence is taking place in Port-au-Prince, but since that's the main entry point for the supplies people in Haiti need to survive and the economic center of the country, that means the suffering spills over throughout the countryside.
