By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 2, 2010; 1:39 PM

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Children are increasingly suffering health problems from the hardships of Port-au-Prince’s crowded encampments, according to international medical workers who predict the situation will worsen as Haiti continues to reel from the Jan. 12 earthquake.
Food is scarce, the sun is fierce, water is often impure and thousands upon thousands of families are living side by side in makeshift shelters that rarely consist of more than a synthetic tarpaulin and thin cloths for walls.
Worried about the potential for disease, medical teams on Tuesday launched a major campaign to vaccinate children in this ravaged capital. In a project expected to last about two weeks, the goal is to protect as many as several hundred thousand children against measles, tetanus and diphtheria, UNICEF spokeswoman Roshan Khadivi said.
“Every day it is worse,” said Pino Gonzalez, a Médecins du Monde nurse working with children at a sweltering encampment on Toussaint L’Ouverture Boulevard, about a mile from the Port-au-Prince airport. “If you go more and more days without food, water or shelter, it can only get worse.”
The vaccinations began Tuesday morning at a large tent encampment at Silvio Cator Stadium.
UNICEF and its partners aim to vaccinate 200,000 children under 7 who are living in the camps, and 500,000 in that age group nationwide.
An American doctor working a triage tent in the courtyard of the Haiti’s State University Hospital said Tuesday that child illnesses “connected to crowding” are growing. He cited meningitis and intestinal disorders exacerbated by the piercing heat and a shortage of food and clean water.
“They’re outside. There’s inadequate shelter,” Rashid Kysia, a Chicago emergency room doctor, said. “When you crowd like this, you get diarrhea and dehydration. They can’t catch up.”
Gonzalez said teams operating mobile clinics in six camps are seeing children with respiratory infections, skin ulcers, gastrointestinal disorders and fever. They often complain of hunger and thirst.
So far, the international food trucks that are increasing deliveries to the city have not stopped in the Toussaint L’Ouverture Boulevard camp, where a citizens committee estimates that 12,000 suddenly homeless people have taken refuge. Nor has there been other help.
“We have asked,” Médecins du Monde physician Philippe Rodier said, “but the problem is so enormous for the resources available.”
An ambitious project to deliver large quantities of rice to hungry residents of the capital continued for a second day Monday. Relief groups backed by U.S. soldiers and United Nations peacekeepers distributed grain at about a dozen sites.
By mid-week, officials estimate, daily deliveries will be underway in 16 places, including gang-wracked Cité Soleil. The effort is scheduled to last 15 days and reach 2 million people. Army Col. Gregory Kane called it the U.N. World Food Program’s “surge.”

“Things are getting better, but the needs are immense,” said David Meltzer, the American Red Cross’s senior vice president for international services. “It will be years. Three weeks into it, it’s still very early to see what the recovery will look like.”
Meltzer told reporters that congestion at the Port-au-Prince airport has limited the delivery of supplies purchased by U.S. donors, who have contributed more than $200 million. The organization will soon start shipping 30,000 “shelter kits,” which include the makings of rudimentary housing for families in the camps.
The Haitian government has requested 200,000 family-sized tents. So far, officials say there are fewer than 3,000 in the country.
For the children in the teeming settlements, there are no organized activities and precious few toys. There are no schools to attend. A half-dozen boys at the camp on Toussaint L’Ouverture Boulevard flew kites they had fashioned from pieces of plastic shopping bags.
The camp, which sprawls over a dusty hill across from a shuttered car dealership, continues to grow, said Boussico Pierre-Louis, an engineer and leader of a citizens committee that keeps order.
“In every tent, there’s a group of about 10 people and of those 10, about four are kids. There are a lot of kids who are sleeping at night without tents,” he said as he maneuvered along narrow paths. “They lost everything.”
Food deliveries, still sporadic, have missed this encampment, even though relief trucks and international soldiers rumble along the main street next to the camp from dawn until dusk. The committee of Haitians, too, has asked for help, to no avail.
“Sometimes I spend several days without eating,” said Myrlande Casimir, who is breast-feeding her 3-month-old son Daniel. She shares a dirt floor in a cloth enclosure with 11 others.
Several tents away, two of Kivier Bazelais’s five children have rashes and sores on their dust-covered skin. His house crumbled in the earthquake. Anything less severe, he said, “I would take the risk and stay under it. It would be much better than staying here.”
A further concern is psychological damage for children. Many have lost relatives and friends. Older children have seen their schools and homes destroyed.
“They have lost security, love and protection,” said University of Florida at Jacksonville pediatric psychiatrist Marlene Goodfriend, who has worked in Haiti. “The psychological effects can be profound, and many of these children will manifest symptoms of stress and possibly post-traumatic stress syndrome.”
Jacklin Blaise’s concerns are more immediate. Holding his 1-year-old daughter Aaliyah, named after the late pop singer, he said she coughs through the night and sleeps little: “She got sick when we came here. The wind, the dust. The kids are under the sun.”
“If by any chance it rains,” Blaise said, “we will all be victims again.”
Staff writer Annie Gowen in Washington contributed to this report.