In Haiti, Abandonment of Disabled Babies a Growing Problem

In Haiti, a growing number of disabled children are left for dead along roadsides, hospital courtyards and sewers -- abandoned by parents who cannot cope.

By Jacqueline Charles
for the Miami Herald
on Saturday, 08/08/09

Life gets worse for Haiti's hungry children

The slow road to death runs high above the scenic coastline, past the crumbled bridges and buried rivers. It traverses a jagged trail passing green slopes and red fertile dirt before arriving here: an isolated mountain village where little Haitian girls dream of eating rice and the doctor is a three-hour walk away.

This is the place where children, suffering from stunted growth, look half their age, where struggling mothers cry that their half-starved babies with the brittle orange hair -- evidence of malnutrition -- neither crawl nor walk.

'He doesn't cry, `Manman.' Or `Papa,' '' says Christmene Normilus, holding her visibly malnourished 2-year-old son, Jean-Roselle Tata.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Her frail body lies almost motionless inside a rusted metal crib. Her diaper is soiled, but she doesn't cry. At 9 months old, she weighs just five pounds.

The staff inside the Abandoned Baby Unit at the government-run Hospital of the State University of Haiti call her Sarafina. She was dumped on the hospital's front steps: No name, no note.

But doctors know her story all too well -- like the dozens of other special needs babies crammed inside the unit, she was tossed out by parents who could not deal with her mental retardation.

``We find them on the streets, in the hospitals, in sewers,'' Dr. Questly Bonne-Anne said amid the wails of bedridden, diaper-clad children confined two and three to small cribs. ``We guess their age, we give them their names.''

Sarafina, named after a musical where students struggle against apartheid, is among the lucky ones.

In this grindingly poor country, disabled children seem to disappear, hidden away as burdens in a culture where parents count on their children to someday provide for them. Even the healthiest of kids here face starvation, violence and child trafficking, but getting anyone to pay attention to the plight of those who are disabled has been difficult, say child advocates.

No one knows for certain how many disabled children are abandoned each year in Haiti, but child abandonment is a growing problem, says Mariavittoria Ballotta, child protection officer with UNICEF-Haiti.

With an estimated 50,000 children living in orphanages throughout Haiti, those with disabilities get lost in the shuffle.

The government's Institute of Social Welfare and Research (IBESR) -- tasked with ensuring their well-being -- is ill-equipped and under-funded.

And so, many end up at the public hospital, according to child care advocates.

The hospital has been plagued by corruption scandals, striking workers and high turnover of administrators.

``Most of the children in the Abandoned Baby Unit are handicapped, mentally challenged, past the legal age of adoption or have terminal illnesses. This makes it nearly impossible for IBESR to find homes in orphanages for these children,'' said Susie Scott Krabacher, the American philanthropist whose nonprofit Mercy and Sharing Foundation finances the unit.

Tucked away in the pediatric ward behind a frosted glass door, the unit is a cramped 30 feet by 15 feet box. Amid a faint ``mama, mama'' and the screams of malnourished babies with matchstick legs and oversized heads, older children sit and stare in an almost catatonic state.

Geraldine, 13, dressed in a light pink dress, rocks in her crib. Suffering from epileptic seizures, she arrived at the unit eight years ago. Her mother left her at the hospital during a doctor's visit.

Then there is Nena, the oldest. She's either 14 or 16; no one knows for sure. Unable to walk, she's confined to the crib. She eats her own feces and bites the nurses who try to clean her. Once a vibrant child, she's slowly losing her mind.

Frustrated by a decade-and-a-half long struggle to bring attention to the plight of the children, Krabacher has started a letter-writing campaign. Among those she's reached out to: Bill Clinton, former U.S. president and now UN special envoy to Haiti. She's not seeking money, she says, just for him to push the Haitian government to make disabled children a priority.

``We are not asking for anything unreasonable, just for us to be able to use the resources we already have to do something, to make it as normal as possible for these kids,'' she said. ``I want the government to take responsibility.''

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jcharles@MiamiHerald.com

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