Yvonne Sylvain, the first Haitian woman doctor, is born in Port-au-Prince

Yvonne Sylvain was born in Port-au-Prince on 28 June 1907, a daughter of the writer Georges Sylvain. She trained first as a teacher at the Ecole Normale. At twenty-eight she became the first woman admitted to the medical faculty in Port-au-Prince, and she took her degree in 1940 – the first Haitian woman to hold one. She practised obstetrics and gynaecology at the General Hospital and later studied at Columbia. She was a member of the Ligue Feminine d’Action Sociale, founded in 1934, the organisation that won Haitian women the vote in 1950. She died on 3 October 1989.