Public health workers at hospitals and clinics across Haiti went on strike in April 2019, demanding payment of salary arrears that in some cases stretched back months. The strike caused significant disruptions to healthcare services in public facilities already operating under severe resource constraints, with patients turning away from shuttered outpatient departments and postponed surgeries.
Nurses, laboratory technicians, and administrative staff who had continued working through months of political crisis while waiting for their pay reached their limit in April. Union leaders said the situation was untenable — workers could not feed their own families while providing services to a public in need.
The Ministry of Health acknowledged the arrears and promised to work toward payment, but was constrained by the government’s overall fiscal crisis. With revenues falling and the finance ministry struggling to meet its obligations across all sectors, there was no easy fix.
Patient advocacy groups called on both the government and the striking workers to find a way to keep essential services running while the salary dispute was resolved. They pointed out that the people most harmed by the strike were the poorest Haitians, who had no access to private healthcare and depended entirely on public facilities. The strike highlighted the cascading human costs of Haiti’s political and fiscal dysfunction.