Foreign Correspondent: Aug 10

This week Foreign Correspondent has a BBC Panorama report on children who have survived the Haitian earthquake earlier this year.

The epic quake brought an unimaginable toll and while the outside world tried to help, what could possibly be done for the smallest and most vulnerable?

Before Haiti was shaken to the ground by January’s magnitude 7 earthquake, estimates put the number of the ramshackle nation’s orphans at a staggering 400,000.

Many of those orphans would die as swathes of Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince and surrounds came tumbling down, but many children would be made orphans as their parents and relatives perished and the grim toll climbed into the hundreds of thousands.

When the ground stilled and the dust settled many of those kids wandered the streets dazed, confused and utterly alone.

We know the rest of the world rallied to help, we made our own contributions and we watched the 24/7 news coverage as a frenzied and sometimes desperate relief effort gathered and grew in scale and intensity. Survival teams pored over rubble. Survivors – big and small – were excavated from giant piles of debris. Cheers and tears from the assembled.

And still little lost children wandered aimlessly between the rescuers and the locals, unknown, unidentified and unhelped.

Months on from the dreadful and destructive shock, BBC Panorama reporter Raphael Rowe travels to Haiti to see whether or not the fragile little flotsam of one of the world’s greatest disasters have been brought back from their lonely destitution and into some form of care.

He discovers a chaotic and largely uncoordinated system. Records have been destroyed, identities unclear, some children assumed orphans are not, others hoping for reconciliation with relatives can’t know if they’re dead or alive. Parents with nothing surrendering their children to what they hope is a better life.

Some children are preyed upon by traffickers. Others are making new lives far away from the disaster zone.

It’s a powerful and moving post-script and not to be missed.

It airs 8pm Tuesday on ABC1.