The cholera outbreak that had begun in late 2022 continued to claim lives throughout the first months of 2023, with the death toll climbing as health authorities struggled to contain a disease that was spreading through communities whose water and sanitation infrastructure remained compromised. By early 2023 the cumulative death toll had surpassed 400, with thousands of additional cases reported across Port-au-Prince and in some provincial areas.
The persistence of the outbreak into 2023 reflected the failure to address the underlying conditions enabling transmission. Water treatment and distribution systems in affected areas of the capital remained disrupted following the gang fuel blockade of late 2022. Displacement sites where thousands of people lived in overcrowded conditions without adequate sanitation continued to generate new cases. Healthcare facilities whose capacity to treat patients was limited by staff shortages, supply chain disruptions, and security constraints could not keep pace with case loads.
MSF, which operated several cholera treatment units in Port-au-Prince, reported treating hundreds of severe cases that required intravenous fluid therapy and intensive medical support. Their facilities were overwhelmed at peak periods, with patients waiting for beds and staff working through exhaustion to provide care for the most vulnerable. Community oral rehydration therapy points provided a first line of defense for milder cases, preventing some from escalating to the severity requiring hospitalization.
Public health experts warned that as long as the security crisis prevented restoration of functioning water and sanitation infrastructure, cholera would remain endemic in Haiti’s most affected communities. The disease that had been introduced by UN peacekeepers in 2010 and killed at least 10,000 people in the years following was once again a significant cause of preventable death in a country that had enough other causes of suffering.