The most vulnerable victims
'Tsunami Generation' braves unprecedented loss, aftermath
 |  The tsunamis left thousands of children, like this Sri Lankan girl, without parents or homes. |
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|  VIDEO |
 UNICEF: Children in Indonesia are potential targets for orphan traffickers.
 CNN's Mary Snow looks at an organization dedicated to protecting children of the tsunami.
 CNN's Brian Todd on the child sex trade preying on tsunami orphans.
 The tsunami will have a lasting impact on children who lived through it.
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(CNN) -- The children gather at a temple in Batapola, Sri Lanka -- laughing, playing and trying to forget.
"When the water came, I was frightened," recalled Sanga, 12, of the tsunamis that struck in late December. "We ran, and our home is gone."
"All the houses were destroyed, all the dresses," added Sujeewa Samarasingha, another orphan living in the southern Sri Lanka temple. "We are very, very sad."
Sleeping 40 to a room, these children are both supremely unfortunate and fortunate. They face extreme challenges -- physical, psychological and otherwise -- in the coming months. But they are alive, having survived a disaster that took thousands of lives including, in many cases, their parents, siblings and friends.
From Thailand to Somalia, more than 150,000 people died in the tsunamis. The United Nation's Children Fund (UNICEF) first estimated children made up one-third of the death toll. But Charles J. Lyons, president of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, said that percentage, if anything, might be too low.
In many hard-hit countries, birth rates tend to be high and life expectancies low -- 30 to 43 percent of residents are age 18 or below -- so children fatality rates somewhat mirror the population breakdown. Beyond that, children are generally more vulnerable than adults -- smaller, weaker and more susceptible to nature's fury and disease.
"Children are much less able to run away, fight the water, hold onto or climb a tree," said Lyons. "Adults that were stronger were more likely to survive; the youngest were simply unable to."
Yet, amid the tragedy, remarkable events left room for hope and faith.
Off Thailand's Khao Lak tourist resort, a woman discovered an 18-month-old boy from Kazakhstan floating on a mattress. His parents are thought to have perished.
Twenty-day-old Suppiah Tulasi also survived. Her parents found her lying on a mattress in 5 feet of water hours after waves flushed them from a Penang, Malaysia, restaurant.
Seattle, Washington, residents Ron Rubin and Rebecca Beddall climbed to the roof of their hotel in Phuket, Thailand, where they spotted 18-month-old Hannes Bergstrom. They took the Swedish boy -- rescued reportedly with the help of a Thai princess -- to a local hospital. Hannes eventually rejoined his father and other relatives. His mother remains missing.
"He had a toy, and he kept squeezing it and he was talking," said Beddall, recalling video showing the reunion. "When we had him, he was not playing and he was not talking. So it made us very happy to see him normal again."
Difficult lives
Shortly before 9 a.m. on December 26, 2004, about 70 children studied, talked and played at their school in Mullitaivu, on the northern Sri Lankan coast. Then the waves rushed in, flooding the building and breaking the kitchen wall.
While some children scaled a mango tree, evading the torrent, half the group -- mostly babies and toddlers -- did not make it.
After the waters relented, "the teacher started taking the babies in her room and examining them," recalled one young survivor. "They were lifeless."
Life was difficult before the tsunamis for children here, a pocket of Sri Lanka ravaged by civil war and stronghold of the rebel Tamil Tigers. Orphanages, sometimes caught in the crossfire, are packed with children whose parents died in the conflict.
Although violence isn't pervasive in all areas struck by the tsunamis, poverty is common. Except for those in exclusive resorts, many victims lived in crowded, dilapidated structures and had few material goods.
 A young boy grieves as he trails a loved one's coffin during a funeral procession in southern Sri Lanka. | |
"They were already profoundly vulnerable communities," said Lyons. "You're talking about largely undeveloped areas, where people are living extremely modest lives."
Some, like Meghna Rajshekhar, have lost or are still looking for their parents. More than 1 million children -- dubbed the "Tsunami Generation" by UNICEF -- were orphaned, displaced, injured or otherwise adversely affected by the disaster, according to the agency.
Meghna clung to a wooden plank, drifting in snake-filled seas for two days. Finally, the waters carried her to the muddy shore of Nicobar Island, off India's coast. Settling with relatives, she retained hopes her parents would reappear.
"I still hope that my parents are alive, searching for me in tension," Meghna said. "I am all right Papa, Mom. Please come back again."
Physical, psychological scars
"I used to play near the waves all the time back home, but I don't want to see it now," S. Chiranjivi, 12, told The Associated Press, days after tsunamis tore through his home in India's Hut Bay Islands. "I can't forget that day."
According to WebMD, half the children exposed to the catastrophe may suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, a rate about 20 percent higher than adults'.
|  The destruction left many children hospitalized, and officials fear poor sanitation and medical care could spur the spread of diseases. |
Aid groups and experts are training teachers to address children's psychological needs, plus setting up schools and social activities for some semblance of normalcy. (Treating children's emotional wounds)
Classes, soccer games and the like are "fabulous signs we're turning the corner," Lyons said, adding that responding quickly could curb more severe mental issues later. "Normalcy is a very relative term, but these are positive steps."
The priority is reuniting children, especially orphans, with relatives. UNICEF urges authorities to be on alert for people who may try to exploit abandoned or distraught children, particularly for human trafficking. (Full story)
Young victims' physical health also requires urgent and sustained attention. Cramped refugee camps, lack of food or clean water and poor sanitation foster prime conditions for measles, cholera and diarrhea outbreaks, as well as dehydration and malnourishment.
Efforts are under way to prevent such problems. Local governments, for example, in the Tamil Nadu and Kerala provinces of India, working with the World Health Organization and UNICEF, plan to administer vitamin A and measles vaccinations to 115,000 children living in refugee camps, to be completed over the course of one week.
Standing water left by tsunamis could be even more deadly than the original onslaught if authorities don't take proper action, Lyons warned.
Not only are such pools breeding grounds for mosquitoes -- which transmit malaria, dengue fever and other diseases -- but unfiltered water can be tantalizing, and dangerous, for thirsty children.
Recovery and rebuilding
 With relief aid and emotional support, Lyons said young victims can recover from the disaster. | |
In 1994, Dayalan Sanders left the United States, selling his home to build and run an orphanage in his native Sri Lanka. Ten years later, the tsunamis struck.
"It was a 30-foot wall of sea just bearing down on us like an angry monster," he recalled.
He crammed 28 orphans and his family into a small boat, crossing a lagoon filled with bodies and people screaming for help to safety in the city.
Sanders, his family and the children survived, but the orphanage did not. But days after his story became public, money started rolling in to Sanders and relatives living in Maryland to build the orphanage anew.
"It's been incomprehensible and just mind-blowing," said Kanya Sanders, Dayalan Sanders' sister. "But we are so thankful and grateful to God."
Individuals, businesses and governments have responded resoundingly to urgent calls for aid, Lyons said. And while no other disaster compares with this one since he joined UNICEF 23 years ago, Lyons said aid organizations and governments have the expertise to improve children's lives on the ground.
"The dividends to fast and generous action are measured in helping kids survive, and investing in the long-term development of these communities," he said. "Unfortunately, the world is well practiced at this sort of thing ...We know what needs to be done."
CNN's Greg Botelho, Matthew Chance, Anderson Cooper, Stan Grant, Jeanne Meserve and Hugh Riminton contributed to this report
