Senator: Injured Haitian kids facing death can now be brought to U.S. for medical treatment

January 21, 2010

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. officials said today an estimated 200 Haitian children can now be granted quick passage to come to the U.S. for life-saving medical procedures, according to Sen. Bill Nelson.

Those children currently are in Haiti with treatable injuries, but likely would die because of a lack of equipment or supplies or absent advanced or specialized care here in the U.S.

“We must help the most vulnerable among us and that includes our neighbors in Haiti where children are in dire need right now,” said Nelson, who is scheduled to travel to Haiti with some of the doctors being sent to care for earthquake victims by the Tampa-based charity Help Brings Hope for Haiti Inc. 

Dr. Barth Green is scheduled to meet Nelson and the doctors in Port-au-Prince at the medical facilities at the airport there.  Green is the University of Miami neurosurgeon who heads The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis and who has emerged as a key player in the frantic efforts to save injured Haitians.

The plight of the most traumatized children in need of special care was brought to Nelson’s attention by Green and other doctors from the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine who are working in Haiti.  One doctor told Nelson’s office about a child with a collapsed lung; an ailment that on most days, in most hospitals may have been a routine fix.  But not right now in Haiti.

The U.S. already had a system in place for taking sick or injured children from other countries on a case-by-case basis.  But that system required trips to the embassy, gathering paperwork from doctors verifying the need is unique and can be met only in the U.S.  It's a process that can take months.

So Nelson called on Homeland Secretary Janet Napolitano last week to ask whether doctors in the field in Haiti could be allowed to determine whether a child’s case was medically compelling enough to warrant a humanitarian visa.  On Thursday, Napolitano’s office told Nelson the government was going forward with such a plan.

“Medical emergency need is grounds for humanitarian parole,” Alejandro Mayorkas, the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, assured Nelson in a telephone call today.

Previously, Nelson had asked his state’s children’s hospitals to stand ready to help some of the quakes’ youngest and most vulnerable victims with the most serious injuries, if they could be brought here.   In a letter to the heads of 13 children’s hospitals in Florida, Nelson wrote to ask that “we come together as a community to help the children of Haiti suffering from this unprecedented disaster.” 

###