Children of Katrina families are sickest in U.S. The children of families displaced from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita have serious health and mental ailments, a new study says. In fact, the report, released Monday by the New York-based Children’s Health Fund, are among some of the sickest children in the nation. One of the most alarming findings: 41 percent of children younger than 4 were diagnosed with iron-deficiency anemia, more than twice the rate of children living in New York City homeless shelters and more than twice the Centers for Disease Control’s rate for high-risk minority populations, Irwin Redlener, president of the group and the study’s author, told USA Today. These children are “the sickest I have ever seen in the U.S.,” Redlener told Newsweek. “As awful as the initial response to Katrina looked on television, it’s been dwarfed by the ineptitude and disorganization of the recovery.” More than half the kids had behavioral or learning problems. Also, 42 percent had respiratory infections and disorders that may be linked to formaldehyde and crowding in the trailers supplied by the government, but later declared unsafe. After Katrina, the Children’s Health Fund, a non-profit group that provides health care to children, set up mobile clinics throughout the Gulf Coast, including one outside Renaissance Village in Baton Rouge, then the largest Federal Emergency Management Agency trailer park in the region. Heath Fund researchers came to their conclusions after reviewing the medical records of 261 children who lived in a federally funded Baton Rouge trailer park until early summer, Redlener said.  The study made some immediate recommendations: FEMA must provide contact information for these children so their medical needs can be treated and funding needs to be extended so that the Katrina children can get further medical attention.