The New York Times talked to Jake Johnston about what cuts to USAID programs mean for Haiti, where public institutions and health infrastructure have been targeted by armed groups. The article, by David C. Adams and Frances Robles, focuses on attacks on Haiti’s largest public hospital, the State University Hospital, including an arson attack last month that left the hospital damaged and prompted doctors and other hospital workers to leave. The hospital has received tens of millions of dollars in USAID funding.

The Times reported:

The hospital’s new wing, which U.S. A.I.D. helped pay for, was already plagued by large cost overruns and a decade of construction delays. Now it is being battered by repeated assaults from criminal groups as Haiti’s capital has become a lawless quagmire despite billions of dollars in international aid.

“The general hospital is sort of like a case study on how it goes wrong,” Johnston told the Times. “And they never finished the work, and the general hospital is closed for all these other reasons.”

The hospital had the only dialysis machines in Haiti, but attacks by armed groups caused millions of dollars in damage and forced the hospital to close and its staff to stay home. It may be years before the hospital reopens, “if the security situation ever improves enough for” it to do so, the Times reports, citing the hospital’s director.

The situation is especially dire as only one of Port-au-Prince’s three major hospitals, and only 39 of 92 health facilities in the capital metro area, are now open.

“Dr. Barth Green, the chairman of Project Medishare for Haiti, a Miami-based charity and a major supporter of health services in the country, said the attack was particularly dispiriting because the general hospital was where generations of nurses and doctors trained,” the Times reports.