Doctors abducted in earthquake-hit Haiti
Two doctors at hospitals treating earthquake victims in Haiti’s capital have been kidnapped, forcing one of the institutions to declare a two-day shutdown in protest, officials said yesterday.
The abductions on Wednesday and Thursday dealt a major blow to attempts to control criminal violence that has threatened disaster response efforts in Port-au-prince.
Dr Workens Alexandre, who was seized, was among the country’s few orthopaedic surgeons, desperately needed for quake victims with broken limbs. An official at the Bernard Mevs Hospital said 45 of the 48 quake victims being treated at the facility needed orthopaedic surgery.
Gangs in the rough Martissant neighbourhood on the capital’s outskirts had announced a truce earlier in the week to allow aid efforts to go through to the southwestern part of Haiti, which was hit hardest by Sunday’s earthquake.
It was unclear if those gangs were involved in the latest abductions, but the founder of the Dash network of affordable hospitals, Dr Ronald La Roche, said criminals have engaged in kidnappings far beyond Martissant.
The Wednesday kidnapping of another doctor, an obstetrician who was on his way to perform an emergency
Caesarean delivery, occurred in Petionville, long considered one of the safer and wealthier areas of the capital. The doctor’s patient and her child both died.
“We are furious at these people,” La Roche said of the kidnappers.
“They are responsible for the death of this woman and her child.”
Of the supposed truce with gangs in Martissant, he said, “We cannot depend on that.”
“We feel that the gangsters are getting more daring,” said La Roche, whose network of eight hospitals and clinics were closing to nonemergency cases in protest of the kidnapping.
The Dash hospitals are treating 27 earthquake victims, and they – and any emergency cases – will continue to receive care.
Kidnappers have contacted the families of both doctors, but there is no information on ransom demands.
The official at the Bernard Mevs Hospital, who asked not to be identified because of safety concerns, said the problem has gotten so bad that a programme has been set up so that doctors can stay in hospital rooms for two or three days to avoid the risk of travel.
The quake killed nearly 2200 people and injured more than 12,000. The abductions in Port-au- Prince directly affect the transfer of patients from overwhelmed hospitals in the quake zone.
Prime Minister Ariel Henry, himself the former head of neurosurgery at Bernard Mevs Hospital, had already recognised that the government cannot depend on the gang truce.
“I have already given orders that for travelling from Port-au-prince to the south, security be provided on the route from Martissant to the worst hit areas,” he said on Thursday.
AP