UN Population Fund sends medical supplies to violence-wracked Haiti

Faced with reports of increased sexual violence and the looting of clinics and hospitals during the sporadic conflict in Haiti, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has sent medical supplies to help victims of the confrontations there.

The UN Population Fund's (UNFPA) representative in Haiti, Hernando Clavijo, said its airlift of drugs and supplies for safe childbirth and for the treatment of rape and sexually transmitted infections arrived yesterday in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince.

The Caribbean country's health care system was stripped bare during the armed civil unrest that ravaged Haiti and led to the departure of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

The reports of increased sexual violence were extremely troubling, not just for the physical and psychological trauma they inflict on women, but also because Haiti has the highest HIV/AIDS prevalence rate in the Americas, at 4.5 per cent, Mr. Clavijo said.

As part of its HIV prevention, UNFPA was accelerating condom distribution, he said.