ARTICLE - MIAMI VIDEO TELECONFERENCE

A special thing is being done for children who were evacuated for medical care to the Miami area. Video teleconferencing has been set up so that parents/family can see and talk to their child. Rudy Clauderre is a boy who was evacuated for cancer treatment. His mother has a video conference appointment to see her son on Thursday afternoon at 3:00pm. The University of Miami/Project Medishare field hospital is the site in Haiti where parents left behind get to see and talk to their child through this special gift of a video teleconferencing system. Rudy's mom is very excited for the opportunity to see and communicate directly with Rudy and his father. Pray for all these medically evacuated children. They all had serious problems/injuries that couldn't be taken care of here in Haiti. So many doors were opened to get these children to the United States. The American government let Rudy and his father into the country without a passport or visa. Special paperwork was approved. The American people can be proud of their government for making it possible for these children to obtain medical care. The article about another boy's video teleconference meeting with his family is below.......

A HAITIAN FAMILY REUNITS IN MIAMI, BY VIDEO
(New York Times) - By Damien Cave

MIAMI — It was a Haitian reunion unlike any other: the 9-year-old boy mostly healed after coming to Miami for surgery, talking to his relatives via video teleconference with a hip-hop band and an N.F.L. star in the background.

Chad Henne, quarterback for the Miami Dolphins, with Exais Peterson, 9, in Miami.

“I want to ask him something,” said the boy’s sister, Mary Rose, 28, in Port-au-Prince, pointing to Chad Henne, the Miami Dolphins quarterback. She smiled coyly. Everyone expected her to ask for a date.

Instead, she asked for a tent.

Mr. Henne looked surprised. “We can try,” he said.

Celebrities and refugees are the oil and water of this tropical city, rarely mixing outside the valet parking lot. Haiti’s earthquake on Jan. 12, however, has repeatedly upset the usual hierarchy. And so it was on Monday that in one part of Miami, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. met with Haitian-American leaders to discuss Haiti’s redevelopment. In another, a celebrated infant named Jenny was reunited with her Haitian parents, while here at the Notre Dame D’Haiti Catholic Church in Little Haiti, technology brought together dazzle, need and a separated family.

In two rooms linked by broadband, tragedy trumped stardom. When Amelise Jean-Baptiste and her son Exais Peterson saw a half-dozen relatives in Haiti on a jumbo television, their travails and triumphs were all that mattered. Peterson, as the boy is known, seized the spotlight.

“Stand up, let me look at you,” his sister said. He puffed out his chest and smiled. She asked him to turn his head. His left ear was still missing its lower lobe; part of his cheek looked as uneven as gravel. But the family in Port-au-Prince looked pleased.

Peterson’s recovery was stunning.

Much of his face had been practically gone when his neighbors pulled him from the rubble of his home in Port-au-Prince four days after the quake.

Dr. Chad Perlyn, a plastic surgeon, recalled taking off the boy’s bandages at a University of Miami field hospital in Haiti and discovering hundreds of maggots. “He lost most of his cheek and scalp,” Dr. Perlyn said. “His whole body was infected.”

Peterson and his mother flew out on a military flight and ended up at Miami Children’s Hospital, where Dr. Perlyn practices. Eleven operations later, Peterson is learning English and living with his mother in a hotel with the families of 18 other children who fled after the quake.

He told his relatives at home that he was happy. His mother said the same, and it took little time for the family to lose itself in catching up.

A half-hour in, publicists reminded the translators that there were stars in the room. “Tell them who’s here with you,” said David Saltz, who usually produces Super Bowl halftime shows. But no one listened.

Eventually the family was introduced to Mr. Henne and Pras Michel, a hip-hop artist formerly of the Fugees. The family smiled politely.

Mr. Henne said later that he had been inspired by the family’s strength and perseverance to plan a trip to Haiti on Sunday to deliver a tent in person. But more than shelter, relatives in Port-au-Prince said, they wanted an assurance that Peterson would be able to stay in the United States permanently.

Conditions are so bad that “to go back to Haiti right now is certain death,” Mary Rose said. Peterson must stay, she added, “even if it means we die so he can live.”