The international organization Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which has worked in Haiti since 1991, is concerned about the reduction of national and international funding, allocated to maternal health in Haiti, which puts women's lives at risk.

MSF points out that in 2015-2016 among others, "the Haitian government will allocate only 5.4% of its total budget to health. It recalled that in 2013, Canada has ended its program dedicated to maternal and child health," one of the examples of the overall reduction, in recent years, of international health financing in Haiti; financing that allow nevertheless until then, to deal many gaps."

MSF explains that "in order to seek care, receive medical care or birth, an unprecedented number of pregnant women now go to the Reference Centre in Emergency Obstetric (CRUO), managed by MSF in Port-au-Prince, which offers specialized obstetric care. Since its opening in March 2011 more than 27,000 babies are born in CRUO and more than 10,000 premature infants were admitted. In 2014, the number of hospitalized newborns in the neonatology department increased by 32% and the number of pregnant women admitted by 18%."

MSF says that facing this influx of patients, "the CRUO had tightened its admission criteria for patients and prioritize its activities focusing on pregnancy and childbirth-risk or complicated. But in fact, the other patients, those who unfortunately do not meet these conditions, have only very few options.

"The expenditure on maternal health care have produced positive results obvious in Haiti. Today, the significant reduction of this funding puts women's lives at risk," laments Paul Brockmann, head of MSF programs in Haiti "We must go back and reconsider this decrease !"

Recall that MSF also runs a specialized unit for the care of people burned at the Drouillard hospital and another hospital in Martissant.

HL/ HaitiLibre