Haiti sends major medical mission to Venezuela

The gov­ern­ment of Haiti has dis­patched a hu­man­i­tar­i­an med­ical mis­sion to Venezuela to as­sist vic­tims of the dev­as­tat­ing earth­quakes that struck the South Amer­i­can coun­try on June 24, de­spite the eco­nom­ic and se­cu­ri­ty chal­lenges fac­ing the French-speak­ing Caribbean na­tion.

The mis­sion, led by Haiti’s Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Health and Pop­u­la­tion, Dr. Sinal Bertrand, ar­rived in Venezuela on Tues­day with a team of 29 spe­cial­ist physi­cians and 5.5 tonnes of med­ical sup­plies to sup­port re­lief and re­cov­ery ef­forts.

Venezuela is con­tin­u­ing to grap­ple with the af­ter­math of twin earth­quakes that au­thor­i­ties say killed 3,685 peo­ple, in­jured more than 16,700 oth­ers and left thou­sands miss­ing.

The Hait­ian del­e­ga­tion in­cludes spe­cial­ists in or­tho­pe­dics, surgery, anes­the­si­ol­o­gy, gy­ne­col­o­gy and in­ter­nal med­i­cine, who will work along­side Venezue­lan health of­fi­cials in pro­vid­ing care to those af­fect­ed by the dis­as­ter.

Ac­cord­ing to the Hait­ian gov­ern­ment, the hu­man­i­tar­i­an ship­ment al­so in­cludes ul­tra­sound ma­chines, oxy­gen con­cen­tra­tors and spe­cialised pe­di­atric med­ical equip­ment.

“We did not come here to de­liv­er left­overs, but to share what lit­tle we have with the Bo­li­var­i­an peo­ple of Venezuela as a sign of sol­i­dar­i­ty and fra­ter­ni­ty,” Bertrand said up­on the del­e­ga­tion’s ar­rival.

We did not send a con­sul­ta­tive del­e­ga­tion; we came with spe­cial­ists ready to make them­selves avail­able to the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment for 15, 20 or 30 days, or even as long as nec­es­sary,” he added.

The del­e­ga­tion was re­ceived at Simón Bolí­var In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port by Venezue­lan health of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing Vice Min­is­ter of Out­pa­tient Care Net­works, Dr Noly Fer­nán­dez.

Fer­nán­dez thanked the Hait­ian gov­ern­ment and peo­ple for their sup­port, de­scrib­ing the mis­sion as a pow­er­ful demon­stra­tion of re­gion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty dur­ing one of Venezuela’s most dif­fi­cult pe­ri­ods.

She said Venezue­lan health au­thor­i­ties are co­or­di­nat­ing the de­ploy­ment of the Hait­ian med­ical per­son­nel to some of the ar­eas hard­est hit by the dis­as­ter, par­tic­u­lar­ly Cara­cas and the state of La Guaira.

“Venezuela wel­comes them with great love, sol­i­dar­i­ty and re­spect for Bo­li­var­i­an ideals. We share a com­mon his­to­ry that will al­low us to move for­ward to­geth­er,” Fer­nán­dez said.

The Hait­ian gov­ern­ment said the mis­sion re­flects its com­mit­ment to hu­man­i­tar­i­an co­op­er­a­tion and re­gion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty, ex­tend­ing con­do­lences to the fam­i­lies of those who lost loved ones and ex­press­ing con­fi­dence in Venezuela’s abil­i­ty to re­cov­er from the tragedy.

Of­fi­cials said the med­ical team will re­main in Venezuela for as long as need­ed to as­sist with emer­gency health­care ser­vices and sup­port on­go­ing re­cov­ery ef­forts.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Jul. 8, CMC

CMC/jd/kb/2026