Ill Haitian children airlifted to US
A five-year-old tetanus victim and a 14-month-old boy critically ill with pneumonia were sent to Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia by the aid group Partners in Health, based in Boston.
The airlift had been in doubt after the US military stopped medical evacuation flights on Wednesday night because of concerns hospitals would not accept the patients as federal and state officials debated who should pay for their care.
Betina Joseph, 5, who developed tetanus from a small cut on her thigh, was in danger of dying if she could not reach a respirator at a US hospital, said Dr Barth Green, chairman of the University of Miami’s Global Institute for Community Health and Development.
“We have 100 critically ill patients who will die in the next day or two if we don’t Medevac them,” Green said.
Meanwhile, relief workers were preparing for a woman-only food distribution system in Haiti’s capital, launching a new phase of what they hope will be less cut-throat aid distribution to ensure families and the weak get supplies following Haiti’s devastating earthquake.
Young men often force their way to the front of aid delivery lines or steal it from others, meaning aid doesn’t reach the neediest at distribution centres, according to aid groups.
The World Food Programme coupons can be turned in by women at 16 sites in the capital, and entitle each family to 25 kilograms of rice.
UN officials say they are still far short of reaching all 2 million quake victims estimated to need food aid.
Federal and state officials appeared to distance themselves from the decision to suspend the military’s medical evacuation flights.
White House officials said they were working to increase hospital capacity in Haiti and aboard the USNS Comfort hospital ship as well as in the United States.
US Ambassador to Haiti Kenneth Merten said he was “sure the Department of Defence wants to do the right thing”.
Police in Haiti charged 10 members of a US Christian ministry group with child trafficking, after they allegedly tried to leave the country with more than 30 survivors of the earthquake.
Haitian Social Affairs Minister Yves Christallin said the police arrested five men and five women with US passports, as well as two Haitians, as they tried to cross into the Dominican Republic with 31 children late on Friday. “This is an abduction, not an adoption,” he said.
CNN reported that the leader of the group, identified as Laura Silsby, said the group’s aims were entirely altruistic and that they were only seeking to seek help for the children in the Dominican Republic.
A hearing before a judge was scheduled for today.
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