Authors: Toni Cela & Olriche Fortin
The COVID-19 global pandemic has served as a wake-up call for many. With each passing day, we witness the importance of social safety nets such as education and access to healthcare, how the built and natural environments can facilitate or hinder health, and how effective leadership can save lives. Most importantly, despite the many boundaries and borders erected to separate ourselves from others, this global pandemic reminds us of the interconnectedness of humankind.
The COVID-19 global pandemic has served as a wake-up call for many. With each passing day, we witness the importance of social safety nets such as education and access to healthcare, how the built and natural environments can facilitate or hinder health, and how effective leadership can save lives. Most importantly, despite the many boundaries and borders erected to separate ourselves from others, this global pandemic reminds us of the interconnectedness of humankind.
Though we are connected as humans there are clear differences in how we are experiencing this health crisis. These experiences are informed as much by biology, our individual behaviors, the configuration of our local communities, the environment in which we live, healthcare policy and systems as they are by local histories, sociopolitical and cultural processes. This crisis also reminds us how health disparities between the rich and poor are entrenched in all societies, including more affluent countries. Yet, while lack of political will may explain the failure to extend health coverage to the most vulnerable in society, nations in the Global South must also contend with resource constraints, both material and human, that make access to even basic healthcare quite daunting. Thus, crises such as Ebola, MERS, SARS, H5N1, provide opportunities for us to challenge the idea of health as profit-based investments. It is in this moment that we must think of access to health as not only a human right but also critical to human development and human security. If nothing else, COVID-19 has placed our health and well-being in the hands of family, friends, neighbors, and strangers whose decisions to get on a flight, wear a mask or gloves, or wash their hands may determine if we become infected or not. However, acknowledging health as human security and human development issues requires that we extend our definitions of citizenship and what that should entail - at the local, national and global levels - and re-examine our relationship to our natural environment. While this acknowledgement challenges conventional premises that govern health policy and health systems in many countries in the Global North, it remains to be owned by those in the Global South, where the wretched of the earth are either stuck in marginalized, if not excluded, communities (Davis, 2006; Merrifield, 2014) or forced to migrate in a perpetual quest to make a living, search for respect, and human dignity.
For many migrants from the Global South, the limitations of citizenship in one place and opportunities afforded to citizens (and residents) in another are often at the core of the decision to migrate. Migrants are searching for better educational opportunities, employment prospects, safety from political, structural, and other forms of violence and inequities, and access to social services such as healthcare. This, certainly, is the case for many Haitian migrants abroad and their families in Haiti who have endured the failed social contract between the state and its citizens over more than two centuries. The state’s failure to provide social safety nets for its people has fomented distrust and disdain by its citizens. Haitians have little expectation of their government and when that government exercises any semblance of leadership it is regarded with suspicion.
On March 19, 2020, the first two known cases of COVID-19 infection were announced in a public address by President Jovenel Moïse, yet few details were provided. President Moïse would immediately declare a national state of emergency for a period of one-month closing all educational facilities and factories while instituting a national curfew from 8pm to 5am, effective March 20, 2020 (Senat, 2020). The Haitian-Dominican border was closed, migrant circulation halted, though goods were permitted to circulate between the two countries, and commercial flights were suspended (Charles, 2020).
On March 27, de facto Prime Minister Joseph Jouthe announced the creation of a 14-member scientific committee, whose mandate is, “to collect and process data related to COVID-19, and make recommendations to the government regarding health measures” (Geffrard, 2020a).
In addition, the Ministry of Public Health and Population (MSPP) launched an awareness campaign via social networks, television, radio, and press releases to educate the population about preventive measures and inform them of infection and mortality rates (MSPP, 2020b). In early April, the President would encourage Haitians to wear masks in public while the Prime Minister would announce the distribution of 21 million masks across the nation, some of which would be fabricated by 10 factories in Haiti (Geffrard, 2020b). However, two weeks later, these masks were not yet available (Le Nouvelliste, 2020). For those with cellular phone service from the Digicel telecommunications company a permanent message appears across their screens that reads, “Wash your hands,” in Haitian Creole. To date, no stay-at-home orders have been issued and social distancing has played a minor role in Haiti’s mitigation strategies. By mid-April, there were 453 suspected cases of COVID-19. Haiti’s MSPP would confirm 41 infections, of which 3 people had lost their lives (MSPP, 2020). While reported numbers appear low, they most likely reflect limited testing capability and the reticence of Haitians experiencing symptoms to seek out testing from a healthcare system that has historically failed to adequately serve them.
For many in the global North, this pandemic has raised awareness, if not consciousness, regarding the vulnerability of the citizenry, economic disparities, and the impact of the environment on human health. The impact of the pandemic on people’s daily lives, the disruption, and continued uncertainty has revealed some of the structural factors that make health, or a healthy lifestyle, possible for some and nearly impossible for others. In countries beset by political, social, and/or economic instability, such as Haiti, vulnerability defines one’s daily experiences. Over half of the population lives below the poverty line and just under one-quarter live in extreme poverty (World Bank, 2020). Twenty percent of the population is illiterate as one-third of Haitians have less than a primary school education or ever attended school at all (IHE & ICF, 2018).
In Haiti, social distancing as a mitigation strategy would be a challenge to enforce because physical proximity characterizes our everyday lives. The average household size is 4.3 (IHE & ICF, 2018). The “public” transportation system, which is actually private and largely unregulated, is frequently overcrowded with no established maximum capacity levels and rarely, if ever, any form of enforced sanctions. Haiti’s most common form of transport, the mototaxi (a motorcycle taxi), can be seen transporting anywhere from one passenger to as many as four, not including its driver. When official announcements of the first cases of COVID-19 infection were made Haitians immediately began panic buying. Supermarkets, still a luxury found only in major cities, were flooded with people. However, most Haitian families purchase food from outdoor street markets which sell the freshest, least expensive, homegrown produce. Street markets are typically bustling with people- vendors, consumers, as well as socializers- engaged in pleasant negotiations, intense haggling, and/or gossip with comrades. Many of these street markets are strategically positioned beside main thoroughfares to cater to pedestrians and passenger vehicles. Yet, Haiti’s poor infrastructure (DINEPA, 2013; Gelting et al., 2013; IDB, 2009; MTPTC, 2017) make these markets a public health threat as vehicles kick up dust from damaged and unpaved roads while emitting diesel fuel and compromised sewage systems are often backed up leaving putrid smells wafting in the air. From these social factors we can glean some of the challenges of enforcing social distancing measures in this context and we can also see how the spread of this virus will be difficult to contain in Haiti.
Compounding vulnerability is lack of access to toilets and potable water (IHE & ICF, 2018; INURED, 2017). A government household survey conducted between 2016-2017 observed that only one-quarter of Haitian households had access to soap and water for hand washing, 12% had water access only while the majority of Haitians, 60%, had neither access to potable water, soap, or any cleaning agent (IHE & ICF, 2018). As only 4% of Haitians have medical insurance (ibid), the majority of the population must pay out-of-pocket for services thus limiting access to quality healthcare (Gage et al., 2017). Finally, food insecurity has become an increasing threat impacting nutrition, a result of land erosion from environmental degradation compounded by climate change (CNSA, 2012). As food insecurity has changed the Haitian diet over time, making it less balanced, the prevalence of certain conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular diseases, has significantly increased.
What will happen once the virus spreads in Haiti, assuming that it has not already? How can we encourage social distancing in this context? What type of messaging is necessary in a circumstance such as this? Why should Haitian citizens trust a government that has failed to represent their interests or institute a viable social contract? How does a government that lacks legitimacy provide the leadership necessary to protect, and ultimately save, human lives? These are some of the immediate issues that Haiti grapples with as it tries to encourage the adoption of mitigation strategies and prevent the spread of a potentially deadly virus. Yet, months of political upheaval, several years of economic turmoil, more than a decade of destabilizing and deadly natural and manmade (e.g., cholera) disasters, and environmental degradation dating back to the colonial period, serve as the backdrop to this pandemic making COVID-19 the latest in an ongoing list of challenges Haiti faces. These challenges have marked the daily lives of the Haitian people: protests that close schools and businesses for months on end, hunger and food riots, skyrocketing unemployment rates, displacement and death caused by disasters, as well as numerous coup d’états. A global pandemic in which you are “asked” to wear masks and wash your hands when you cannot afford and, in some cases, may not have access to either simply pales in comparison to other crises. Many, unfortunately, believe the pandemic is a tactic of distraction employed by an illegitimate government. And many will become infected, and possibly lose their lives, due to such skepticism.
Yet, in the end, Haitians will be credited for their “resilience”. As the saying goes, “Nou la pi red [We are still here] !” Resilience has little currency when survival is all you can aspire to. It can lead to complacency, if not resignation. Haiti is not unique in this regard, many nations in the Global South have endured being on the losing side of modernity, capitalism, and globalization. A pandemic such as this has much less “shock value” when you have survived genocide, war, famine, structural adjustment programs, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, earthquakes, and other disasters. There is less to fear when you have so little to lose.
Yet for those in the North who have lived a life of (even relative) privilege, this pandemic has the potential to upend life as they have come to know it. Many capitalist powerhouses, such as the United States, must contend with the threat of unemployment which can very quickly lead to bankruptcy and poverty. Even among the social democracies of Europe, the lifestyle change that this health and consequent economic disaster will bring is for many utterly unimaginable. The level of precarity, instability, and uncertainty is frightening due to its novelty. Crises, or disasters, such as these are supposed to happen in remote, far off lands and, possibly, in poor and marginalized communities at home that are populated by people from those same far off lands. Ironically, this is one of only a handful of times in history in which migrants and the working poor have been acknowledged as “essential workers” despite the obvious indispensability of their labor. They have been called to duty putting their lives at risk as they do not have the luxury of working remotely. Such crises are not supposed to happen in modern, advanced societies. Yet, here we all are experiencing vulnerability and uncertainty together.
Now that disaster lies at everyone’s doorstep, it is a wake-up call for those who have benefitted from globalization but never had to reckon with its daily toll on human life. We are experiencing collective vulnerability; most of us face the threat of infection with limited possibility for testing, there is a global scramble for ventilators, and the shortage of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) has made all hospitals sites of risk. Months of uncertainty lie ahead as we wait with bated breath for a vaccine to bring this nightmare to an end. The lines have been blurred between developed and developing nations.
What lies before us all, in the North and South, is an opportunity to re-examine the paradigm of development vehiculated by the forces of global capitalism and its “world order” as well as our roles in it. It is in these critical, “life and death” moments that our core values are revealed. How governments respond to citizens’ needs, how we treat our neighbors (in our communities, migrants in our countries, and the nations with which we share borders), and how we inhabit the world from this moment forward will reveal our true selves. This is our opportunity to put an end to unnecessary human suffering and create a new framework for human development and the rights creed of global citizens. The consequences of doing otherwise would be unimaginable.
References
Charles, J. (2020, April 20). Haiti confirms COVID-19, closes airports to all flights | Miami
Herald. Miami Herald. Retrieved from https://amp.miamiherald.com/news/nation-
world/world/americas/haiti/article241362616.html?__twitter_impression=true
Coordination Nationale de la Sécurité Alimentaire (CNSA). (2012). Haiti: Perspective sur la sécurité alimentaire. Port-au-Prince: Gouvernement d’Haïti.
Davis,M. (2006). Planet of Slum. London: Verso.
DINEPA (National Directorate for Water Supply and Sanitation). (2013). National plan for the elimination of cholera in Haiti, 2013-2022. Port-au-Prince: Ministry of Public Health and Population.
Gage, A.D., Leslie, H.H., Bitton, A., Jerome, J.G., Thermidor, R., Joseph, J.P. and Kruk, M.E.
(2017). Assessing the quality of primary care in Haiti. Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 95: 182-190. http://dx.doi.org/10.2471/BLT.16.179846.
Geffrard, R. (2020a, March 27). Le gouvernement crée une cellule scientifique pour lutter contre
le coronavirus. Le Nouvelliste. Retrieved from: https://lenouvelliste.com/article/214134/le-
gouvernement-cree-une-cellule-scientifique-pour-lutter-contre-le-
coronavirus/amp?__twitter_impression=true
Geffrard, R. (2020b, April 14). Le port du masqueest “indispensable” aujourd’hui, selon Jovenel
Gelting, R., Bliss, K., Patrick, M., Lockhart, G., and Handzel, T. (2013). Water, sanitation and hygiene in Haiti: Past, present, and future. American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, 89(4): 665-670.
Moise, J. (2020). Le Nouvelliste. Retrieved from: https://lenouvelliste.com/article/214843/le-port-du-masque-est-indispensable-aujourdhui-selon-jovenel-moise
Institut Haïtien de l’Enfance (IHE) et ICF. (2018). Enquête Mortalité, Morbidité et Utilisation des Services (EMMUS-VI 2016-2017) Pétion-Ville, Haïti, et Rockville, Maryland: IHE et ICF.
Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). (2009). Haiti Invests Heavily in Rebuilding Roads. Retrieved from: https://www.iadb.org/en/news/webstories/2009-04-13/haiti-invests-heavily-in-rebuilding-roads,5339.html
Interuniversity Institute for Research and Development (INURED). (2017). After Hurricane Matthew: Resources, Capacities, and Pathways to Recovery and Reconstruction of Devastated Communities in Haiti. Retrieved at: http://www.inured.org/uploads/2/5/2/6/25266591/reportonline__051117.pdf.
McMichael, A.J. (2013). Globalization, climate change and human health. New England Journal of Medicine, 368(14): 1335-43.
Merrifield, A. (2014). The New Urban Question. London: Pluto Press.
Ministère de la Santé Publique et de la Population (MSPP). (2020a). Avi-17: 41 Ka Konfime nan Peyi Dayiti. Port-au-Prince: Gouvernement d’Haïti.
Ministère de la Santé Publique et de la Population (MSPP). (2020b). Plan de Preparation et de
Reponse du MSPP au Coronavirus. Retrieved from
https://mspp.gouv.ht/site/downloads/Plan de Préparation et de Réponse du MSPP au
CoronaVirus.pdf
Ministère des Travaux Publics, Transports et Communications (MTPTC). (2017). Les transports. Retrieved on March 5, 2019 at: http://www.mtptc.gouv.ht/accueil/les-defis/page_transports.html
Sénat, J. D. (2020). Coronavirus : 2 cas confirmés en Haïti, Jovenel Moïse décrète
l’état d’urgence sanitaire. Le Nouvelliste. Retrieved from
https://lenouvelliste.com/article/213751/coronavirus-2-cas-confirmes-en-haiti-jovenel-moise-
decrete-letat-durgence-sanitaire/amp
World Bank. (2020). Haiti at a Glance. Retrieved from: https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/haiti/overview
For many migrants from the Global South, the limitations of citizenship in one place and opportunities afforded to citizens (and residents) in another are often at the core of the decision to migrate. Migrants are searching for better educational opportunities, employment prospects, safety from political, structural, and other forms of violence and inequities, and access to social services such as healthcare. This, certainly, is the case for many Haitian migrants abroad and their families in Haiti who have endured the failed social contract between the state and its citizens over more than two centuries. The state’s failure to provide social safety nets for its people has fomented distrust and disdain by its citizens. Haitians have little expectation of their government and when that government exercises any semblance of leadership it is regarded with suspicion.
On March 19, 2020, the first two known cases of COVID-19 infection were announced in a public address by President Jovenel Moïse, yet few details were provided. President Moïse would immediately declare a national state of emergency for a period of one-month closing all educational facilities and factories while instituting a national curfew from 8pm to 5am, effective March 20, 2020 (Senat, 2020). The Haitian-Dominican border was closed, migrant circulation halted, though goods were permitted to circulate between the two countries, and commercial flights were suspended (Charles, 2020).
On March 27, de facto Prime Minister Joseph Jouthe announced the creation of a 14-member scientific committee, whose mandate is, “to collect and process data related to COVID-19, and make recommendations to the government regarding health measures” (Geffrard, 2020a).
In addition, the Ministry of Public Health and Population (MSPP) launched an awareness campaign via social networks, television, radio, and press releases to educate the population about preventive measures and inform them of infection and mortality rates (MSPP, 2020b). In early April, the President would encourage Haitians to wear masks in public while the Prime Minister would announce the distribution of 21 million masks across the nation, some of which would be fabricated by 10 factories in Haiti (Geffrard, 2020b). However, two weeks later, these masks were not yet available (Le Nouvelliste, 2020). For those with cellular phone service from the Digicel telecommunications company a permanent message appears across their screens that reads, “Wash your hands,” in Haitian Creole. To date, no stay-at-home orders have been issued and social distancing has played a minor role in Haiti’s mitigation strategies. By mid-April, there were 453 suspected cases of COVID-19. Haiti’s MSPP would confirm 41 infections, of which 3 people had lost their lives (MSPP, 2020). While reported numbers appear low, they most likely reflect limited testing capability and the reticence of Haitians experiencing symptoms to seek out testing from a healthcare system that has historically failed to adequately serve them.
For many in the global North, this pandemic has raised awareness, if not consciousness, regarding the vulnerability of the citizenry, economic disparities, and the impact of the environment on human health. The impact of the pandemic on people’s daily lives, the disruption, and continued uncertainty has revealed some of the structural factors that make health, or a healthy lifestyle, possible for some and nearly impossible for others. In countries beset by political, social, and/or economic instability, such as Haiti, vulnerability defines one’s daily experiences. Over half of the population lives below the poverty line and just under one-quarter live in extreme poverty (World Bank, 2020). Twenty percent of the population is illiterate as one-third of Haitians have less than a primary school education or ever attended school at all (IHE & ICF, 2018).
In Haiti, social distancing as a mitigation strategy would be a challenge to enforce because physical proximity characterizes our everyday lives. The average household size is 4.3 (IHE & ICF, 2018). The “public” transportation system, which is actually private and largely unregulated, is frequently overcrowded with no established maximum capacity levels and rarely, if ever, any form of enforced sanctions. Haiti’s most common form of transport, the mototaxi (a motorcycle taxi), can be seen transporting anywhere from one passenger to as many as four, not including its driver. When official announcements of the first cases of COVID-19 infection were made Haitians immediately began panic buying. Supermarkets, still a luxury found only in major cities, were flooded with people. However, most Haitian families purchase food from outdoor street markets which sell the freshest, least expensive, homegrown produce. Street markets are typically bustling with people- vendors, consumers, as well as socializers- engaged in pleasant negotiations, intense haggling, and/or gossip with comrades. Many of these street markets are strategically positioned beside main thoroughfares to cater to pedestrians and passenger vehicles. Yet, Haiti’s poor infrastructure (DINEPA, 2013; Gelting et al., 2013; IDB, 2009; MTPTC, 2017) make these markets a public health threat as vehicles kick up dust from damaged and unpaved roads while emitting diesel fuel and compromised sewage systems are often backed up leaving putrid smells wafting in the air. From these social factors we can glean some of the challenges of enforcing social distancing measures in this context and we can also see how the spread of this virus will be difficult to contain in Haiti.
Compounding vulnerability is lack of access to toilets and potable water (IHE & ICF, 2018; INURED, 2017). A government household survey conducted between 2016-2017 observed that only one-quarter of Haitian households had access to soap and water for hand washing, 12% had water access only while the majority of Haitians, 60%, had neither access to potable water, soap, or any cleaning agent (IHE & ICF, 2018). As only 4% of Haitians have medical insurance (ibid), the majority of the population must pay out-of-pocket for services thus limiting access to quality healthcare (Gage et al., 2017). Finally, food insecurity has become an increasing threat impacting nutrition, a result of land erosion from environmental degradation compounded by climate change (CNSA, 2012). As food insecurity has changed the Haitian diet over time, making it less balanced, the prevalence of certain conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular diseases, has significantly increased.
What will happen once the virus spreads in Haiti, assuming that it has not already? How can we encourage social distancing in this context? What type of messaging is necessary in a circumstance such as this? Why should Haitian citizens trust a government that has failed to represent their interests or institute a viable social contract? How does a government that lacks legitimacy provide the leadership necessary to protect, and ultimately save, human lives? These are some of the immediate issues that Haiti grapples with as it tries to encourage the adoption of mitigation strategies and prevent the spread of a potentially deadly virus. Yet, months of political upheaval, several years of economic turmoil, more than a decade of destabilizing and deadly natural and manmade (e.g., cholera) disasters, and environmental degradation dating back to the colonial period, serve as the backdrop to this pandemic making COVID-19 the latest in an ongoing list of challenges Haiti faces. These challenges have marked the daily lives of the Haitian people: protests that close schools and businesses for months on end, hunger and food riots, skyrocketing unemployment rates, displacement and death caused by disasters, as well as numerous coup d’états. A global pandemic in which you are “asked” to wear masks and wash your hands when you cannot afford and, in some cases, may not have access to either simply pales in comparison to other crises. Many, unfortunately, believe the pandemic is a tactic of distraction employed by an illegitimate government. And many will become infected, and possibly lose their lives, due to such skepticism.
Yet, in the end, Haitians will be credited for their “resilience”. As the saying goes, “Nou la pi red [We are still here] !” Resilience has little currency when survival is all you can aspire to. It can lead to complacency, if not resignation. Haiti is not unique in this regard, many nations in the Global South have endured being on the losing side of modernity, capitalism, and globalization. A pandemic such as this has much less “shock value” when you have survived genocide, war, famine, structural adjustment programs, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, earthquakes, and other disasters. There is less to fear when you have so little to lose.
Yet for those in the North who have lived a life of (even relative) privilege, this pandemic has the potential to upend life as they have come to know it. Many capitalist powerhouses, such as the United States, must contend with the threat of unemployment which can very quickly lead to bankruptcy and poverty. Even among the social democracies of Europe, the lifestyle change that this health and consequent economic disaster will bring is for many utterly unimaginable. The level of precarity, instability, and uncertainty is frightening due to its novelty. Crises, or disasters, such as these are supposed to happen in remote, far off lands and, possibly, in poor and marginalized communities at home that are populated by people from those same far off lands. Ironically, this is one of only a handful of times in history in which migrants and the working poor have been acknowledged as “essential workers” despite the obvious indispensability of their labor. They have been called to duty putting their lives at risk as they do not have the luxury of working remotely. Such crises are not supposed to happen in modern, advanced societies. Yet, here we all are experiencing vulnerability and uncertainty together.
Now that disaster lies at everyone’s doorstep, it is a wake-up call for those who have benefitted from globalization but never had to reckon with its daily toll on human life. We are experiencing collective vulnerability; most of us face the threat of infection with limited possibility for testing, there is a global scramble for ventilators, and the shortage of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) has made all hospitals sites of risk. Months of uncertainty lie ahead as we wait with bated breath for a vaccine to bring this nightmare to an end. The lines have been blurred between developed and developing nations.
What lies before us all, in the North and South, is an opportunity to re-examine the paradigm of development vehiculated by the forces of global capitalism and its “world order” as well as our roles in it. It is in these critical, “life and death” moments that our core values are revealed. How governments respond to citizens’ needs, how we treat our neighbors (in our communities, migrants in our countries, and the nations with which we share borders), and how we inhabit the world from this moment forward will reveal our true selves. This is our opportunity to put an end to unnecessary human suffering and create a new framework for human development and the rights creed of global citizens. The consequences of doing otherwise would be unimaginable.
References
Charles, J. (2020, April 20). Haiti confirms COVID-19, closes airports to all flights | Miami
Herald. Miami Herald. Retrieved from https://amp.miamiherald.com/news/nation-
world/world/americas/haiti/article241362616.html?__twitter_impression=true
Coordination Nationale de la Sécurité Alimentaire (CNSA). (2012). Haiti: Perspective sur la sécurité alimentaire. Port-au-Prince: Gouvernement d’Haïti.
Davis,M. (2006). Planet of Slum. London: Verso.
DINEPA (National Directorate for Water Supply and Sanitation). (2013). National plan for the elimination of cholera in Haiti, 2013-2022. Port-au-Prince: Ministry of Public Health and Population.
Gage, A.D., Leslie, H.H., Bitton, A., Jerome, J.G., Thermidor, R., Joseph, J.P. and Kruk, M.E.
(2017). Assessing the quality of primary care in Haiti. Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 95: 182-190. http://dx.doi.org/10.2471/BLT.16.179846.
Geffrard, R. (2020a, March 27). Le gouvernement crée une cellule scientifique pour lutter contre
le coronavirus. Le Nouvelliste. Retrieved from: https://lenouvelliste.com/article/214134/le-
gouvernement-cree-une-cellule-scientifique-pour-lutter-contre-le-
coronavirus/amp?__twitter_impression=true
Geffrard, R. (2020b, April 14). Le port du masqueest “indispensable” aujourd’hui, selon Jovenel
Gelting, R., Bliss, K., Patrick, M., Lockhart, G., and Handzel, T. (2013). Water, sanitation and hygiene in Haiti: Past, present, and future. American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, 89(4): 665-670.
Moise, J. (2020). Le Nouvelliste. Retrieved from: https://lenouvelliste.com/article/214843/le-port-du-masque-est-indispensable-aujourdhui-selon-jovenel-moise
Institut Haïtien de l’Enfance (IHE) et ICF. (2018). Enquête Mortalité, Morbidité et Utilisation des Services (EMMUS-VI 2016-2017) Pétion-Ville, Haïti, et Rockville, Maryland: IHE et ICF.
Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). (2009). Haiti Invests Heavily in Rebuilding Roads. Retrieved from: https://www.iadb.org/en/news/webstories/2009-04-13/haiti-invests-heavily-in-rebuilding-roads,5339.html
Interuniversity Institute for Research and Development (INURED). (2017). After Hurricane Matthew: Resources, Capacities, and Pathways to Recovery and Reconstruction of Devastated Communities in Haiti. Retrieved at: http://www.inured.org/uploads/2/5/2/6/25266591/reportonline__051117.pdf.
McMichael, A.J. (2013). Globalization, climate change and human health. New England Journal of Medicine, 368(14): 1335-43.
Merrifield, A. (2014). The New Urban Question. London: Pluto Press.
Ministère de la Santé Publique et de la Population (MSPP). (2020a). Avi-17: 41 Ka Konfime nan Peyi Dayiti. Port-au-Prince: Gouvernement d’Haïti.
Ministère de la Santé Publique et de la Population (MSPP). (2020b). Plan de Preparation et de
Reponse du MSPP au Coronavirus. Retrieved from
https://mspp.gouv.ht/site/downloads/Plan de Préparation et de Réponse du MSPP au
CoronaVirus.pdf
Ministère des Travaux Publics, Transports et Communications (MTPTC). (2017). Les transports. Retrieved on March 5, 2019 at: http://www.mtptc.gouv.ht/accueil/les-defis/page_transports.html
Sénat, J. D. (2020). Coronavirus : 2 cas confirmés en Haïti, Jovenel Moïse décrète
l’état d’urgence sanitaire. Le Nouvelliste. Retrieved from
https://lenouvelliste.com/article/213751/coronavirus-2-cas-confirmes-en-haiti-jovenel-moise-
decrete-letat-durgence-sanitaire/amp
World Bank. (2020). Haiti at a Glance. Retrieved from: https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/haiti/overview