One year on, what next for Haiti baby Landina?

Since the beginning of the year Channel 4 News has followed the story of baby Landina Seignon who was pulled from the rubble of the Haitian earthquake.

About 300,000 people were killed when Haiti was hit by a 7.0 magnitude earthquake in January. When the quake struck baby Landina was in a Port au Prince hospital being treated for severe injuries to her head sustained in a fire last December. Her relatives were missing, feared dead.

After being found alive two days after the quake, Landina was moved to a field hospital run by Médecins Sans Frontières. Her right arm had been amputated and she was suffering from a serious head injury, caused by the original burns.

At St Louis field hospital she was treated by British surgeon David Nott, a specialist from London, who recognised that the clock was ticking for the sick baby.

Mr Nott, a volunteer in Haiti, felt she only had days to live if she didn’t receive a critical operation on her badly burnt skull, which had left the burnt bone dead and exposed her to risk of a fatal brain infection. Baby Landina needed to be evacuated as the complex operation could not be done in Haiti.

Evacuated to Britain

After a complex process of arranging travel and guardianship documents, Landina was finally evacuated to Britain for medical treatment. At the time no one knew where her family were, or even if they were alive.

Facing the World, a British charity that specialises in craniofacial reconstructive surgery for children from around the world, became Landina’s guardian.

Facing the World had been trying to trace family members but establishing an accurate picture was proved difficult. In March Inigo Gilmore, reporting for Channel 4 News – who first revealed Landina’s story after she was pulled from the rubble – returned to Haiti to search, for the family after the charity had struggled to locate any known relatives.

After many false leads Landina’s mother, Marie Miracle Seignon, was tracked down to a slum in Port au Prince where she lived with her three other children.

For Marie Miracle, learning that the baby she had given up for dead was still alive came as a shock.

Landina had shared this precarious hand-to-mouth existence with her three other siblings before a house fire – caused by fallen candle – put her in hospital on Christmas Day 2009 when she was just four weeks old.

Mother located

After a DNA test confirmed Marie Miracle was Landina’s mother she was brought to London by Facing the World to be reunited with her daughter.

They were able to spend a few weeks together reconnecting. Landina was also baptised with members of London’s Haitian community as witnesses.

But in September Marie Miracle had to return to her other children in Haiti without her youngest daughter, who still needed treatment in London for her extensive injuries.

Marie Miracle received a hero’s welcome as she returned to her slum home. Few ever leave these cramped alleyways, let alone Haiti – even though so many are desperate to escape.

Marie Miracle returned to a country still in ruins. Billions of dollars in aid has still not materialised. Cholera was breaking out amid the filth and crippling poverty.

Three weeks after Marie Miracle returned to Haiti, David Nott followed.

Many Haitians feel abandoned by the international community but those involved in Landina’s life are determined to give continued help and hope.

Mr Nott went to assess whether Landina, her head still fragile, can come home – and how best to support her family to enable that to happen by improving their living conditions. It’s a struggle, but her carers in Britiain are determined to give support to the family, so Landina can have a future in Haiti

Worries about the future

With the family living without basic amenities in the cramped conditions of a slum, the British surgeon was concerned that Landina would not receive all the medical care and attention she needs.

Mr Nott said: “It’s filthy, there’s a lot of running sewage. She can’t possibly go there.”

The hope had always been for Landina to return home once she is healthy, but her carers in London fear what might happen if she does. So too does her mother, who is battling to raise a young family in the bleak living conditions of the slum.

Marie Miracle is aware that Landina would face a difficult future in Haiti, where one disaster follows fast upon another but David Nott and other carers in Britain are determined to provide a secure and stable future for Landina’s family.

As Landina celebrates her first birthday in London, her mother reflects on what it means to be a mother in a country like Haiti.

“When I was in England I was happy. I was overjoyed at finding her again – you can’t imagine how much,” Marie Miracle said.

“But when I came back I became aware Haiti was no good for Landina.”

You can watch Inigo Gilmore’s full story of baby Landina on Channel 4 at 9pm, 28 December.