The organization Doctors Without Borders (MSF) announced on Wednesday the permanent closure of its emergency center based in downtown Port-au-Prince, "in the face of intensifying insecurity" in this part of the Haitian capital .

"For several weeks, the area surrounding the center of Port-au-Prince has become the scene of regular armed violence," the NGO announced in a press release announcing the permanent closure of the Turgeau Emergency Center.

The facility, along with the Carrefour trauma hospital in the southwest of the city, remained closed since a "targeted" attack on an MSF medical convoy last March.

The Turgeau building was "hit several times by stray bullets due to its location close to combat zones, which would make resuming activities too dangerous for patients and staff alike ," Jean-Marc Biquet, MSF head of mission in Haiti, explained in the press release.

MSF, which "deeply regrets this difficult decision taken as a last resort" , stresses that it will have "a significant impact on access to care for a population already hard hit by violence, instability and increasingly precarious living conditions" .

Long plagued by criminal gangs accused of murder, rape, looting and kidnapping, in a context of political instability, the poorest country in the Americas has seen a resurgence of violence since mid-February.

In an attempt to curb the abuses of gangs that control almost the entire capital and to help the overwhelmed Haitian police, the United Nations Security Council last month approved the creation of an anti-gang force to succeed the Multinational Security Mission (MMAS).

This force, created in 2023 and led by Kenya, has achieved more than mixed results due to a lack of sufficient equipment and funding and with a staff of only a thousand agents out of the 2,500 hoped for.

Established in 2006 in Martissant and then moved to Turgeau in 2021 for security reasons, the MSF Emergency and Referral Centre – which employed 206 people – treated more than 100,000 patients of all ages from 2021 to March 2025, “thus demonstrating its vital role among the vulnerable populations of the capital” , underlines MSF.

Despite this closure and the continued suspension of activities at the Carrefour hospital, MSF, which has been present in Haiti for 30 years, says it is continuing its activities "unceasingly" in several health facilities in the capital.