The struggle ahead for Haiti's injured
Updated on 08 February 2010
As a relief effort seeks to take critically injured baby Landina Seignon abroad for medical treatment, many Haitian earthquake victims are forced to struggle with a devastated infrastructure.
Since the 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit Haiti on 12 January aid organisations and volunteers have been fighting to help the hundreds of thousands left injured and homeless.
Not only did an estimated 170,000 people die but the quake also destroyed government buildings and hospitals crucial to the country's infrastructure.
On Saturday Channel 4 News reported the case of baby Landina who was badly injured in the quake. Doctors have said her condition is deteriorating.
The three-month-old was being treated for serious burns to her head at a hospital when the quake stuck destroying part of building.
Doctors were forced to amputate Landina's right arm after she was pulled from the rubble and she now requires urgent medical evacuation to remove dead bone from her head.
British surgeon David Nott has been tending to the child since she arrived at the Medicines sand Frontiers hospital two weeks ago. He is currently working with the Haitian government and the UN in an effort to evacuate Landina for emergency treatment abroad.
The bone in Landina's skull must be replaced with a titanium plate in a complex procedure. But with limited facilities the three-month-old will need to be airlifted abroad for intensive treatment.
The Foreign Office has told Channel 4 News it is standing by ready to help, but with arrangements yet to be confirmed, the race is on to find somewhere appropriate for Landina.
Although the baby is only one child, Simon Eccles, a consultant craniofacial surgeon with Facing the World, said her case may be key in opening the door to other children who needed similar help.
He said that a number of issues were prohibiting the baby being treated in Haiti.
"The child needs treating in a secure medical environment that has a pediatory intensive care unit, neurosurgeons, craniofacial surgeons," he said.
"There has bee such devastation to the medical conditions in Haiti, I think that is unlikely.
"The problem is, if you start the treatment and then there is a problem where do you go?"
Thousands of injured Haitians have been evacuated abroad for medical treatment since the earthquake.
The US military has recently resumed emergency flights for critically injured victims following warnings that the US is struggling to cope with the influx of patients.
In Haiti authorities say US personnel have treated 23,000 injured people.
As Landina is not believed to have any known relatives alive the case now rests with the Haitian government to appoint her a guardian if she is to be taken overseas.
The three-month-old is also one of as estimated 200,000 people that will end up losing one or more limbs following the earthquake. Her right arm was badly injured in the earthquake and has to be amputated by doctors.
In a country where an estimated 800,000 already lived with a disability, prosthetic organisations have warned of the huge task facing Haiti as it struggles to rehabilitate hundreds of thousands of amputees.
Organisation such as Healing Hands for Haiti - a US-based charity set up 10 years ago to provide rehabilitation for people disabilities - says that three-quarters of their facilities have been destroyed.
For Landina the wait is on for whether the Haitian government will approve her guardianship and allow her to travel abroad for treatment her doctors say she cannot live without.
Dr Nott told Channel 4 News: "The major problem is that the baby has no mother or father, she is guardianless and has nobody to look after her.
"So she is three months old with one arm and a burnt head and after a while infection will get on board and she will probably die."
