Gangs abduct 2 doctors in Haiti
Surgeon, obstetrician taken as quake victims line up for care
LES CAYES, Haiti — Two doctors at hospitals treating earthquake victims in Haiti’s capital have been kidnapped, forcing one of the institutions to a declare a two-day shutdown in protest, officials said Thursday.
The abductions Tuesday and Wednesday 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 orthopedic surgeons, desperately needed for quake victims with broken limbs.
Haiti’s Civil Protection Agency late Wednesday raised the number of deaths from the earthquake to 2,189 and said 12,268 people were injured. An estimated 300 people are missing, said Serge Chery, head of civil defense for the Southern province, which includes Les Cayes.
The magnitude-7.2 earthquake damaged or destroyed more than 100,000 homes, leaving about 30,000 families homeless, according to official estimates. Hospitals, schools, offices and churches also were demolished or badly damaged.
An official at Bernard Mevs Hospital said 45 of the 48 quake victims being treated at the facility needed orthopedic surgery.
Gangs in the Martissant neighborhood on the capital’s outskirts had announced a truce earlier in the week to allow aid efforts through to the the southwestern part of Haiti, which has hit hardest by Saturday’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 Tuesday kidnapping of another doctor, an obstetrician who was on his way to perform an emergency cesarean 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 because of the delay in treatment.
“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. They are working now in Petionville, the center of the city,” said La Roche, whose network of eight hospital and clinics will close to nonemergency cases to protest the kidnapping.
The DASH network of eight hospital and clinics will close to nonemergency cases to protest the kidnapping, La Roche said. They will continue to treat the 27 earthquake victims in their care.
Kidnappers have contacted the families of both doctors, but there is no information on ransom demands.
The official at Bernard Mevs Hospital, who asked not to be identified because of safety concerns, said the problem has gotten so bad that a program has been set up so that doctors can stay in hospital rooms for two or three days to avoid the risk of travel.
The abductions in Port-auPrince directly affect the transfer of patients from the overwhelmed hospitals in the south to the capital, the last hope for the most severely injured.
Prime Minister Ariel Henry, himself the former head of neurosurgery at Bernard Mevs Hospital, on Wednesday ordered security to be set up along the route between the capital and the worst-hit areas.
Relief began flowing more quickly on Thursday, but the Caribbean nation’s entrenched poverty, insecurity and lack of basic infrastructure still were presenting huge challenges to getting food and urgent medical care to all those who need it.
Private relief supplies and shipments from the U.S. government and others were arriving in the southwestern peninsula where the weekend quake struck. But the need was extreme, made worse by the rain from Tropical Storm Grace, and people were growing frustrated with the slow pace.
The U.S. has deployed several heavy-lift helicopters and other aircraft to move relief supplies and personnel to the disaster zone and
has dispatched the USS Arlington to provide additional transportation and medical capabilities, Maj. Gen. Hank Taylor said at the Pentagon.
Distributing aid to the thousands left homeless will be challenging.
Chery said officials are hoping to start clearing sites where homes were destroyed to allow residents to build temporary shelters.
Tension over the slow distribution of aid has become increasingly evident in hardhit areas. At the small airport in the southwestern town of Les Cayes, people thronged a perimeter fence Wednesday as aid was loaded into trucks and police fired warning shots to disperse a crowd of young men.
Henry said Wednesday that his administration will try not to “repeat history on the mismanagement and coordination of aid,” a reference to the country’s devastating 2010 earthquake, when the government and international partners struggled to channel help to the needy in the widespread
destruction and misery.