After weeks without, stricken Haiti hospitals start to receive diesel

Port-au-Prince, Oct 29 (EFE).- Fuel started to arrive on Friday at hospitals in Haiti, where in the last week 50 healthcare centers were forced to suspend services after having exhausted their reserves.

Two trucks supplied 2,000 gallons of diesel to the Haitian State University Hospital (HUEH), as well as other centers in the capital, such as La Paix Hospital and the Ambulance Center, Unicef told Efe.

Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry announced early on Friday that fuel distribution would be resumed with the help of the police in order to pass through roadblocks set up by armed gangs in the capital.

Most of Haiti’s commercial establishments, public institutions and hospitals obtain their electricity from fuel-dependent generators.

The lack of supply has caused the death of some patients at HUEH, according to its director Jessy Colimon Adrien.

“We have had patients who arrived in imminent danger of death and, unfortunately, they did not survive,” Adrien said, without specifying the death toll.

The shortage also caused difficulties for healthcare personnel in getting to their jobs, which caused “the malfunction of some services” and forced the center to buy diesel at a high price on the black market to ensure operations.

In recent weeks, truckers supplying fuel have been the target of attacks by armed gangs, which also blocked access to fuel tanks in the capital’s port.

The country’s employers criticized Friday the “apparent apathy of the authorities” in the face of the prolonged insecurity in a letter addressed to the prime minister.

“Communications networks, also supplied by fuel-dependent generators, fell. Industry, services, small, medium and large companies, providers of the few jobs that still remain, are also very threatened,” which will mean “serious consequences for what remains of the economy,” the letter said. EFE

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