Haitian children are on their own

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — The children with no names lay mute in a corner of the General Hospital grounds Tuesday, three among thousands of boys and girls set adrift in the wake of Haiti’s earthquake.

“Hi, Joe, how are you?” the American doctor tried, using a pet name the staff had given a boy of about 11.

There was no response.

“Joe,” “Baby Sebastian” and the girl who didn’t even have a nickname hadn’t spoken or cried since they were brought in over the previous 48 hours — by neighbors, passers-by, no one knows who. “Sebastian,” only a week old, was said to have been taken from the arms of his dead mother.

They’re lucky: Haitian-born Dr. Wisdom Price and the staff were treating them for infections and other ailments. Hundreds of thousands of hungry and thirsty children are scattered among Port-au-Prince’s squatter camps of survivors, without protection against disease or child predators — often with nobody to care for them.

“There’s an estimated 1 million unaccompanied or orphaned children or children who lost one parent,” said Kate Conradt, a spokeswoman for the aid group Save the Children. “They are extremely vulnerable.”

The U.N. children’s agency, UNICEF, has established a special tent camp for girls and boys who, one way or another, were separated from their parents in the Jan. 12 quake, and who are in danger of falling prey to child traffickers and other abusers. The Connecticut-based Save the Children has set up “Child Spaces” in 13 makeshift settlements. The Red Cross and others, meanwhile, are working to reunite families.

The post-quake needs of Haiti’s children were nonetheless outrunning the available help. Some youngsters were even being released from hospitals with no one to care for them — there just aren’t enough beds for them.

“Health workers are being advised to monitor and send separated/unaccompanied children to child-friendly spaces,” the U.N. humanitarian office said in its latest situation report.

The plight of the young is especially poignant even in a country where the U.N. estimates 3 million out of a population of 9 million need international assistance in the quake’s aftermath. “We still have a huge distance to go,” said John Holmes, the U.N. relief coordinator.

That was evident in Port-au-Prince’s streets, alleys and crumbled doorways, where handwritten messages begged for help. In the Juvenat neighborhood, a group of 50 families scrawled in green on a white sheet hung from a doorway: “We need food assistance, water and medicine.”

It was evident, too, among the tightly packed line of jostling people waiting for food aid near the quake-devastated National Palace, under the nervous watch of Brazilian U.N. peacekeepers who occasionally fired pepper spray or pointed their guns to control the crowd.

“They treat us like animals. They beat us, but we are hungry people,” said Muller Bellegarde, 30, who had been waiting 90 minutes in the broiling sun.

The monumental scale of the Haiti disaster — perhaps 200,000 dead, a capital city on its knees — has severely strained the world’s ability to get relief supplies through Port-au-Prince’s overloaded airport and crippled seaport.