In a note, Mary Gréta Roy Clement Minister of Health and Population, said she learned with dismay the verbal and physical abuse suffered by the Medical Director of the Maternity Isaïe Jeanty (MIJ) said "Chancerelles" in Port-au-Prince, by ill-intentioned individuals with handguns.

"This in a hospital environment is unacceptable and can not in any case solve the many problems faced by this establishment which was beginning to find a regular mode of operation."

She pointed out that the Ministry had recently undertaken a series of administrative reforms at the University Hospital Center, which was too often the victim of strikes, and that since then staff and patients had had a more relaxed working environment.

Continuing "[...] The latest protest movements that caused the closure of the Maternity, were orchestrated by former contract workers who have endangered the lives of hospitalized patients as well as staff forced to vacate the premises.

These unspeakable acts can not be used as an excuse to force the Ministry to recruit staff in a health institution whose vocation is to provide quality obstetric and gynecological health care in addition to its vocation of university training.

The Ministry condemns the acts perpetrated and recalls that health institutions are inviolable spaces and that no one has the right to enter armed, and even less to harm the lives of patients, caregivers and officials."

HL/ S/ HaitiLibre