Haiti baby Landina arrives in UK
Updated on 12 February 2010
Landina Seignon, the three-month-old baby who suffered serious head injuries during the Haiti earthquake, has arrived in London for treatment at Great Ormond Street hospital.
Landina will go straight to Great Ormond Street children’s hospital for medical assessment.
On 6 February Channel 4 News reported that Landina would die unless she was operated on abroad to remove dead bone from her skull, where she had suffered burn injury.
British surgeon David Nott, working as a volunteer in Haiti, had tended to the child for two weeks since her arrival at the Medecins sans Frontieres hospital after being pulled from the rubble. The baby’s mother is missing, presumed dead, and has no known family.
In addition to the burns on her head, Landina has already had to have her right arm amputated.
Three days after the original Channel 4 News report, it was reported on 9 February that Landina’s condition was deteriorating as she awaited approval to be evacuated. She subsequently received approval from the Haitian health minister, Alex Larson, and a letter was signed to fast-track the baby’s removal from the country.
Yesterday Channel 4 News reported that there had been a last-minute delay in the efforts of doctors in Haiti to get Landina out of the country. She was car-parked next to a helicopter standing by to take her to her flight to Britain, awaiting the paperwork necessary to secure her departure.
