Médecins Sans Frontières inaugurates new emergency obstetric care hospital in Haiti

Médecins Sans Frontières' emergency obstetric centre in the Delmas 33 area of Port au Prince. © Yann Libessart/MSF

On August 18, medical aid organisation Médecins Sans Frontières officially inaugurated its new specialised emergency obstetric care hospital in the Delmas neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

The hospital is called CRUO – Centre de Référence en Urgences Obstétricales (Referral Centre for Obstetric Emergencies). The facility began treating patients in March of this year.

Médecins Sans Frontières built CRUO following the destruction of its previous emergency obstetric care hospital, Maternité Solidarité, in the January 2010 earthquake.

The new 122-bed facility provides 24-hour free care for women who are experiencing a range of serious, often life-threatening complications in their pregnancies. These include conditions like pre-eclampsia and eclampsia, obstetric hemorrhage, and uterine rupture.

Since March, more than 1,700 women have delivered at CRUO, including 380 in the first two weeks of August alone. All of these were emergency deliveries.

CRUO offers a full range of reproductive health care services, including antenatal and postnatal care, family planning, treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, and counseling and testing for HIV.

In addition, the hospital provides neonatal care and offers mental health counseling to patients as needed.

The hospital is staffed by a team of primarily Haitian health professionals and support staff. It is equipped with its own laboratory, blood bank and pathology department.

In providing these emergency obstetric care services, Médecins Sans Frontières continues to work in close collaboration with the Haitian Ministry of Health, in particular the nearby La Paix hospital.

Médecins Sans Frontières began providing emergency obstetric care to Haitian women at Jude Anne hospital in Port-au-Prince in 2006, seeking to help reduce Haiti’s extremely high levels of maternal mortality.