Haiti today, in verified numbers — and what they mean for hospitals

Honest work in Haiti starts with honest numbers, so here are the World Bank's, current as of its March 2026 assessment. Each is a national statistic; each is also something specific that happens inside a hospital.

The economy has contracted for seven consecutive years — 2.7% in 2025 alone — with inflation averaging 28.3%, concentrated in food and housing. For a hospital, that is a budget that shrinks while every imported part, reagent, and fuel delivery gets more expensive.

About 49% of Haitians now live on less than $3.00 a day, and an estimated 5.4 million people struggle daily to find enough to eat. Patients arrive sicker, later, and less able to pay; malnutrition complicates everything from surgery recovery to newborn care.

Violence has displaced 1.4 million people as of March 2026, and the UN recorded more than 5,500 people killed in 2025. Displacement empties some catchment areas and overwhelms others — and hospital staff are displaced people too, commuting through the same insecurity to keep wards open.

Half the population lacks grid electricity, and the half that has it cannot rely on it. As our infrastructure article details, that single fact shapes more equipment decisions in Haiti than any specification sheet.

Numbers like these can produce either despair or clarity. We choose clarity: in every one of these statistics there are Haitian clinicians, technicians, and administrators still running hospitals — improvising power, stretching consumables, repairing what cannot be replaced. They are not waiting to be rescued; they are holding a line. The network's entire purpose is to make that line easier to hold: remote expertise on demand, parts and consumables that arrive as planned, training that stays, and equipment chosen for the Haiti that exists rather than the one in brochures.