Amid Haiti’s rubble and pain, charity brings hope to child quake victims

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12 April 2012

The young Haitian earthquake victim beams with joy as she shows how her once badly injured hand has healed successfully.

Ten-year-old Dahanna Guerrier was told at a Port-au-Prince hospital that she would need an amputation after her right hand was crushed by falling masonry in last January's force 7 tremor.

In one of the rare signs of hope where the prospects of thousands of children remain blighted by the lack of progress since the quake, she can now wave her hand with pride as her mother Camille Yurose described how it was saved by doctors from the London-based medical relief charity Merlin.

"She was always very sociable but the doctors at the local hospital wanted to cut off her hand. That would have made her different and if that had happened she would have lost her confidence," said Ms Yurose, 44, in the spartan living area, with its two simple chairs and a cooking area, of her family's two-room apartment.

"So we went to the Merlin doctors who did five operations to save it. Now she's back in school, just as confident as before, and getting good grades. You can't even see the injury and she's made a really good recovery."

Dahanna was injured at her family's former home in Port-au-Prince, one of the thousands destroyed by the earthquake which claimed 220,000 lives and injured tens of thousands more.

The medical treatment she received, which took six weeks of operations and involved a series of skin grafts and complex reconstructive surgery, was provided free by Merlin at the field hospital set up by the charity.

As her mother explained, elsewhere it would have cost a prohibitive amount, thousands of US dollars, even if local doctors had even been willing to attempt to carry out the highly skilled work. "I wouldn't have had the money to pay," said Ms Yurose, who was forced to live in a tent before finding her simple, but by Haitian standards, relatively comfortable new home.

The happy outcome for Dahanna, who says she wants to be a doctor when she grows up, is mirrored by the story of three-year-old Woodolf Eloi, who now runs around seemingly unaware of his missing right arm.

He too was treated by Merlin, receiving plastic surgery after arriving at their field hospital with a bone protruding from the stump of an incomplete amputation carried out elsewhere.

His father Fouchard, a 40-year-old mechanic, said that Woodolf, nicknamed "Woody" by Merlin's staff, has made a startling recovery and was optimistic about the boy's future.

"He was in a lot of pain, but he's very courageous and now he's always smiling and running around," said Mr Eloi. "Woodolf's injury hasn't been a burden to him so far, but many children have suffered physically and emotionally and there needs to be lots of follow-up to make sure they are well looked after."

As a report by the United Nations' children's organisation, Unicef, will highlight this week, immense problems remain in Haiti.

More than 10,000 under-fives are expected to need treatment for severe malnutrition this year, while half of all children are not in education.

Even of those who were in class before the quake, about 20 per cent have still to resume their schooling although, more positively, the international aid effort has meant that some children from the slums have received education for the first time in the past year.

Infant mortality, one of the highest in the world even before the earthquake, is another severe problem, while the estimated 225,000 Haitian children working as domestic servants is feared to have increased.

Similarly, although 1,265 children separated from their parents or carers, either before or after the earthquake, have been reunited, nearly 3,600 more are still in temporary care. The estimated 1.2 million children, some orphaned or abandoned, who even before the earthquake were deemed vulnerable to abuse, violence or exploitation, is thought to remain the same.

Child trafficking is still also a concern, despite improved police training, tighter controls on adoptions and more effective border patrols by child protection teams, and efforts to train more social workers.

An outbreak of cholera, which has already claimed more than 2,500 lives and continues to spread because of poor sanitation, has added a further potent threat to Haiti's future.

The piles of rubble and wrecked buildings in Port-au-Prince, and the sprawling tented camps, home to a million people, confirm the scale of the challenge that lies ahead.

As Geraldine Kelly, 55, a midwife who has worked in Haiti for Merlin since May, said: "They are still living the same way they were since the earthquake. The conditions are awful. I feel terribly sad. There really doesn't seem to be any improvement."

Perhaps one of the most distressing stories is of Emmanuel Etienne, 22, one of the first patients treated by Merlin. Trapped for two days under the rubble, he had his badly infected right leg amputated below the knee and now has a prosthetic limb which stops him walking far or playing football.

What bothers him most is that he now cannot afford the $400-a-year fees to complete his education and train as an engineer. "If it wasn't for Merlin I probably wouldn't even be alive," he said. "But my biggest problem is that I don't have the money to go back to school. It's so frustrating."

His distress may be slight in comparison with all the suffering that Haiti endured a year ago. But while so many obstacles remain, the prospects for Emmanuel's country appear bleak.

Anyone wishing to support Merlin should contact the charity via its website, merlin.org.uk, or call 0207 014 1600.

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