Abduction case slows flights for injured children

Pilots have been increasingly reluctant to ferry injured Haitian children out of the country for treatment.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, February 10, 2010 (AFP) - Pilots have been increasingly reluctant to ferry injured Haitian children out of the country for treatment in the wake of the arrest of 10 Americans on charges of abducting children, a coordinator of the evacuations said.

Pilots "are very hesitant to take off to get the patients without having documentation in their hand in the United States," said Elizabeth Greig, who coordinates medical evacuations at the University of Miami field hospital in the Haitian capital.

Grieg told AFP that the pilots "don't want to run the risk of coming down here, picking up a patient and then taking them back to the US without any documentation."

She attributed the pilots' wariness to the highly publicized case of 10 American missionaries who were detained trying to take a busload of 33 children to the Dominican Republic without government permission.

The ten have been charged with child abduction and criminal conspiracy in a case that has angered Haitians struggling in the chaotic aftermath of a January 12 earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people.

It has affected the aero medical evacutation of injured children by private charities and relief groups "in the sense that we have a limited amount of pilots that are willing to take off and get our patients."

"The hospital was sending between 10 to 15 injured children to the US per day on private flights," she said. "Yesterday we could evacuate only three children on private flights to American hospitals."

Greig said evacuations aboard US military planes were unaffected, but that the private charities could be sending many more children to the United States for medical care.