With Haiti cut off from the world, supplies are dwindling and its crisis is getting worse

As photojournalist Giles Clarke walked through the maternity ward of a hospital in Cap-Haïtien, Haiti, he asked a doctor why it was so dark.

“We only have a few lights working and rely on generators, which are expensive to feed,” said Dr. Petit-Frere Arabella, the resident maternity doctor at the Justinien University Hospital. “We also have no running water, as the main hospital pump is down.”

The hospital staff, like many in Haiti right now, are doing the best they can with what little they have. The Caribbean nation, struggling with an epidemic of deadly gang violence and political instability, is facing a humanitarian crisis. Supplies are scarce as little is getting into the country.

“The airport, port and roads are all closed,” Jacob Burns, operations manager for Médecins Sans Frontières, told Clarke. “We have had no significant medical supplies delivered in weeks.”

Food has also been tough to come by, although the World Food Programme has been trying to fill in the gaps. But its supplies are dwindling, too, and there have been shortfalls in donor funding for the UN’s Humanitarian Response Plan.

Clarke was able to return to the capital of Port-au-Prince earlier this month via a World Food Programme helicopter. In addition to visiting some of the few functioning medical facilities, he also photographed chaotic displacement sites and dilapidated schools that are occupied by people who have fled gang violence.

“The city I knew and have visited for the past 14 years is now a full-blown war zone in many areas,” he said. “Streets where we drove 12 weeks ago are now empty and under gang control — ‘no go zones.’ The General Hospital where I had met doctors, nurses and patients in February was no longer in operation and is now occupied by a gang and being used as a forward staging post for attacks against the nearby National Palace.”

Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry resigned last month, handing power over to a transitional council. Haiti now awaits the deployment of a multinational security support force, led by Kenya.

“Contractors are furiously building temporary shelters for them near the airport, but they are likely to be only a few hundred in number,” Clarke said. “The gang leaders, meanwhile, have pledged to fight until the very last man to drive them out.”