Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is continuing to respond to the earthquake that shook Haiti this weekend and provide medical care to people who have been injured. The magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck the southern region of Haiti on Saturday, August 14, at 8:30 am local time. Our teams are on the ground providing help in the provinces of Grand’Anse, Nippes, and Sud, which were the areas worst affected. Our teams working in Port-au-Prince have also treated dozens of injured patients brought to the capital from the earthquake zone.
Landslides and flooding brought on by recent storms, including Tropical Storm Grace, have caused additional damage to areas where people are already struggling to access basic services like medical care.
MSF will continue to reinforce its response in the coming days. We are bringing in more emergency staff (including emergency coordinators), medical teams (including trauma surgeons), and water and sanitation and logistical experts. MSF is also preparing to send approximately 100 tons of medical and relief supplies to Haiti via two planes set to arrive this weekend. The cargo includes items for setting up emergency medical structures and offices for operations using tents, materials to install emergency drinking water supply systems for at least 30,000 people, and medical supplies for the care of 30,000 patients, including items for stabilization, first aid, vaccination, and blood collection.
The Haitian Civil Protection General Directorate (DGPC) says 137,000 families have been affected in the Grand'Anse, Nippes, and Sud provinces. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), approximately 500,000 people—40 percent of the total population in the affected provinces—are in need of emergency humanitarian assistance. The provisional death toll is now nearly 2,000, according to Haiti’s Office for Civil Protection, and more than 9,900 people have been injured as of August 18. These figures are expected to increase in the coming days. Many municipalities in the affected areas remain isolated from the rest of the country, making it difficult to get accurate death and injury counts.
In terms of infrastructure, nearly 61,000 homes were destroyed, and more than 76,000 homes were damaged in the three most affected provinces, according to Haiti’s Office for Civil Protection. This has left thousands of people without shelter and critical structures like hospitals, schools, hotels, churches, and businesses. According to initial assessments by OCHA, 24 health facilities were damaged or destroyed by the earthquake. Many hospitals had to evacuate their patients, and the facilities that continue to function are overwhelmed and experiencing a lack of medical equipment and medicines.
Making the situation worse for people in Haiti, from Monday evening to Tuesday morning, Tropical Storm Grace passed over Haiti’s southern peninsula, causing extremely heavy rains—up to 10 inches—and flooding. The storm has complicated rescue efforts by making more areas inaccessible and endangering tents and temporary structures being used for urgent medical care, aid, and shelter.