Specialists detected 90 new cases of the disease this year, 42 of them minors and 33 women, a situation that has raised an alarm among authorities, a report from that ministry, cited by the newspaper Le Nouvelliste, adds. The effects of the multifaceted national crisis include health deficits such as vaccination, along with visible consequences such as looting, kidnappings, and rapes, caused by the takeover of entire towns by criminal gangs, the newspaper explains.

Haiti is helplessly witnessing, it comments, the continuous deterioration of its population’s living conditions, and it is difficult to express in words all the consequences of the multifaceted crisis that has brought the country to its knees.

Authorities estimate that this situation is concentrated in camps for internally displaced persons, while most referral hospitals are closed, and communities in the West, Artibonite, and Central departments have been without state control for two years.

The government of Prime Minister Didier Fils-Aime, in power since November 2024, is unaware of the living conditions of the population residing in these latter communities and is unable to guarantee services such as vaccination, Le Nouvelliste points out.

The focus of the alert today is on diphtheria, the newspaper argues, but it would not be surprising if other diseases linked to hygiene and nutrition were causing silent deaths throughout the country.

abo/arm/mem/apb