International aid groups, say tens of thousands of children have been orphaned by the earthquake. So many in fact, that officials won't venture a number.

 

With so many buildings destroyed and growing chaos in the capital, it's likely that many children are now alone.

International advocacy groups, are trying to help, either by speeding up adoptions already in progress, or by sending in relief personnel who could evacuate thousands of orphans to the US and other countries.

This five-month-old patient at the Israeli field hospital in Port-au-Prince has a number rather than a name.

No one even knows who brought the child to the makeshift medical center after he was pulled from the debris of a collapsed building four days after last week's earthquake.

Amit Assa, Israeli Doctor, said, "He came barely conscious. He was severely dehydrated with gangrene. Maybe this evening or tomorrow, we'll see it is not working and we will have to do an amputation of the leg."

He's now recovering, but doctors have a difficult decision ahead - what to do with him once they have treated him.

At the Israeli field hospital, doctors are expecting to treat many more orphans in the coming days.

Even before last Tuesday's magnitude-7.0 earthquake, Haiti had 380-thousand children living in orphanages or group homes.

On Monday, the Dutch government sent immigration officials to Haiti. The team will try to locate and evacuate 100 children who were already being adopted by Dutch parents.

And Indiana-based Kids Alive International, which runs orphanages around the world, is expected to take 50 Haitian orphans to group homes in the Dominican Republic.

US Homeland Security spokesman Sean Smith says that orphans who have ties to the US, such as a family member already living there, were among those who could get special permission to remain in the United States.

In the meantime, UN humanitarian chief John Holmes said the United Nations was establishing a group whose mission in Haiti would be to protect children, orphans and non-orphans alike, against trafficking, kidnapping, and sex crimes.