# Doctors Without Borders closes emergency center in Port-au-Prince
Doctors Without Borders says it has permanently closed its emergency care center in Haiti's capital because ongoing violence has made the site too dangerous to reopen.
The organization said the Turgeau emergency center in Port-au-Prince was a key lifeline for a city now about 90% controlled by gangs. More than 60% of the capital's health facilities, including Haiti's general hospital, are now shuttered or non-functioning because of the surge in violence, according to the report.
MSF had already temporarily closed the center in March 2025 after armed men opened fire on four vehicles evacuating staff. Some employees suffered minor injuries. The building itself had also been repeatedly hit by stray bullets because of its location near combat zones, making a restart too dangerous for both patients and workers, according to Haiti mission head Jean-Marc Biquet.
The center's history shows how the security situation has gradually pushed humanitarian medicine out of the capital. It opened in Martissant in 2006, moved to Turgeau in 2021 for security reasons, and treated more than 100,000 patients there between 2021 and March 2025. In February alone, the center recorded more than 2,500 consultations, and in the week before the March attack it treated more than 300 patients.
The closure lands in a country already overwhelmed by violence and displacement. The U.N. says more than 3,100 people were killed in Haiti from January to June, and another 1,100 were injured. The International Organization for Migration says a record 1.4 million people have been displaced, with many new displacements occurring outside Port-au-Prince.
The practical effect is severe. With a central emergency center gone, residents have even fewer places to turn for trauma care and urgent treatment. In a city where armed groups shape daily movement, the loss of a major medical facility is not just an institutional setback but a direct hit to survival.
The organization has not said whether it intends to shift the service elsewhere in the capital. What it has made clear is that the current security environment no longer allows the center to function safely.
That decision captures the scale of Haiti's collapse: when a clinic that once treated tens of thousands of people shuts for good, it is no longer just a health story. It is a measure of how violence has displaced basic civilian life.
For Port-au-Prince, the closure adds another marker to a long emergency that now reaches into almost every part of city life, from hospitals to transport to routine access to care.
