Faced with the absent State, Haiti is trying to organize

Text by: Romain Lemaresquier Follow

If the epidemic has not yet killed in Haiti, the country is preparing for the arrival of Covid-19. But in the absence of clear directives from the authorities, civil society and the private sector are mobilizing, as confirmed by Frantz Duval, the editor of the daily Le Nouvelliste in an interview with RFI. This Thursday, April 2, 16 people were officially tested positive in Haiti and nearly 400 others placed in quarantine.

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There is no shortage of initiatives in Haiti to try to prepare for a Covid-19 epidemic, as the daily Le Nouvelliste saw on Monday, March 30. Invited to a guided tour of the Sacré-Coeur hospital in Milot, in the north of Haiti, the daily reported on the progress of measures concerning the care of patients with Covid-19. “ Milot hospital is part of the structures managed by Haitian NGOs. These are private hospitals but which provide a service to the population without paying them, ”explains Frantz Duval. Milot hospital is " the second hospital in Haiti that says it is officially ready to receive cases of Covid-19 " said the editor of the daily. The other hospital that has announced that it can treat patients is Mirebalais, also managed by an NGO.

During this guided tour organized by the managers of this structure, Le Nouvelliste was able to observe the establishment of 10 beds to care for patients deemed critical and 24 others for patients without complications. The hospital, specifies Le Nouvelliste , has been split into two: a section dedicated to people who have contracted Covid-19, and another for other patients. The question of quarantine has not been forgotten either, according to Frantz Duval: " In Haiti for the moment there is no solution for those who are positive but who have no symptoms. It is complicated to respect a quarantine at home, difficult to keep people in the hospital. Private hospitals are considering a way to keep them and feed them so that they do not return home and that they do not come into contact with parents or people who are not affected by Covid-19 ”.

The private structures are therefore ahead of the public structures, advance the editor of the Nouvelliste: " Up to now the Haitian authorities, the hospitals managed by the State are still not able to say which are the centers which will be able welcoming people affected by this virus ”.

Scouts start making handmade masks

It is not only the private and voluntary sector that is mobilizing. While the Haitian State communicates very little on the subject, an initiative of Haitian civil society will allow the establishment of a structure capable of manufacturing protective masks. Launched by scouts, it now has the support of several organizations. “ Scouts had started by creating handwashing points. They went out into the street and offered to wash their hands. Then the scouts realized that it would be necessary to have masks and that these were not available in the country. It is not an accessory used in Haiti, it is reserved for the medical world. There is no stock, the masks are expensive. When they launched this initiative, several NGOs decided to join them . ”

A coalition called Koud Konbit was therefore launched. A system that relies on employees who worked in crafts or subcontracting and who today no longer have jobs and therefore no longer have any income. The latter will receive at home patterns and fabric to sew and make these masks. " These will be handmade masks, " explains Frantz Duval, " but it will be better than nothing. As there are no other masks, we will have to do with the means available . ” "Koud Konbit" launched a call to receive fabric and funds. The masks will be sold, but at an affordable price. The goal: to be able to manufacture 10 million masks in Haiti.

The question of the dead, a painful memory

In this epidemic crisis, the question of the dead often comes up again. A subject which also makes the front page of the Nouvelliste. How to take charge of them, in what structure? Without protocol and without arrogance , the situation looks complicated in Haiti, explains Frantz Duval: “ Haiti was struck after the 2010 earthquake by this inability to bury many people at the same time. Nothing had been planned. Mass graves had been made in a hurry. Today the Nouvelliste is sounding the alarm. You have to start thinking about it, decide what to do, especially since there is no municipal mortuary, no large capacity mortuary. It's a myriad of private institutions that deal with the dead. There is no protocol. Even these private mortuaries do not know how to deal with the remains of someone who has died of Covid-19 . ”

If the Haitian authorities, in their plan to take over Covid-19, announced that funeral bags would be required for each corpse, these bags are currently invisible. This absence of protocol worries the funeral sector as well as that of the morgues, hence this question from the Nouvelliste : " What are we going to do to solve this problem in a country that had to bury the dead in very bad conditions after the 2010 earthquake ? "

Journalists' associations urge authorities to take action

While the risk of the spread of Covid-19 is increasingly real, the Haitian Network of Health Journalists (RHJS) and the Association of Haitian Journalists urged Tuesday April 1, in a joint note, the authorities of the country to set up containment for at least 14 days.

Journalists also call for testing and quarantine to stem the spread of the virus. " We have the impression that the Haitian authorities are not yet taking all the measure of what is happening, that they are not watching the news abroad, how quickly we can go from a few cases to thousands of cases " Explains Frantz Duval ," hence this call for containment, so that people wear masks in public places, that the affected areas are placed in quarantine. But for the moment the Haitian authorities are reacting with a few days of delay to each proposal made by civil society ”. Every day counts in this race to avoid an epidemic in Haiti.

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