Haiti’s Biggest Hospital, Dependent on U.S.A.I.D., Goes Up in Smoke
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A fire set by gangs at the country’s largest public hospital underscores long-simmering problems in Haiti, which is heavily dependent on international aid.
Two days before last Christmas, Dr. Pierre S. Prince took an exciting new job as director of Haiti’s largest public hospital, which the United States spent tens of millions of dollars renovating and is so deep in gang territory that it has been closed for a year.
Dr. Prince, a 57-year-old thoracic surgeon, looked forward to returning to the State University Hospital of Haiti, which had been ravaged by the 2010 earthquake that decimated the country’s capital.
He did his residency there and was going to oversee a new wing, a 500-bed facility with nearly $100 million in renovations and a range of services, including operating rooms, orthopedics and a maternity and neonatal unit.
On Christmas Eve, as he headed to work, gangs attacked a news conference scheduled to announce the hospital’s partial reopening, killing a police officer and two reporters, and seriously injuring seven other journalists. The reopening never happened.
The situation worsened last month: Videos that circulated on social media and were verified by The New York Times showed an older building at the general hospital, as it is commonly known, engulfed in flames. Gang members had apparently set it on fire.
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