Haitian child quake victims flown to U.S. for care

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Doctors skirted a bureaucratic logjam to save the life of two critically ill child victims of Haiti's earthquake on Sunday, flying them to U.S. hospitals on a private jet to avoid a military suspension of medical evacuation flights.

A 5-year-old tetanus victim and a 14-month-old boy critically ill with pneumonia were sent to Children's Hospital in Philadelphia by the aid group Partners in Health, based in Boston.

The airlift had been in doubt after the U.S. military stopped medical evacuation flights on Wednesday night because of concerns that hospitals would not accept the patients as federal and state officials debated who should pay for their care.

Five-year-old Betina Joseph, who developed tetanus from a small cut on her thigh, was in danger of dying if she could not reach a respirator at a U.S. hospital, said Dr. Barth Green, chairman of the University of Miami's Global Institute for Community Health and Development.

"We have 100 critically ill patients who will die in the next day or two if we don't Medevac them," Green said Friday.

Meanwhile, relief workers were preparing for a woman-only food distribution system in Haiti's capital, launching a new phase of what they hope will be less cutthroat aid distribution to ensure that families and the weak get supplies following Haiti's devastating Jan. 12 earthquake.

Young men often force their way to the front of aid delivery lines or steal from it from others, meaning aid doesn't reach the neediest at rough-and-tumble distribution centers, according to aid groups.

The World Food Program coupons can be turned in by women at 16 sites in the capital starting Sunday, and entitle each family to 25 kilograms (55 pounds) of rice.

U.N. officials say they are still far short of reaching all 2 million quake victims estimated to need food aid.

Both federal and state officials appeared to distance themselves from the decision to suspend the military's medical evacuation flights.

White House officials said they were working to increase hospital capacity in Haiti and aboard the USNS Comfort hospital ship as well as in the United States.

Col. Rick Kaiser said Sunday that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been asked to build a 250-bed tent hospital to relieve pressures on the Comfort and on Haitian facilities where earthquake victims are being treated under tarpaulins in hospital grounds.