NWI World Insights - Iraqi girl treated for serious burns in the USA

A report by Tim Rogers of ITV news last week on NWI described the plight of a young Iraqi girl just 15 years of age who was a victim of a US bomb attack in the first few days of the war. Hanan Ahmed suffered severe burns to her face and her hands when a bomb explosion knocked an oil lamp off the side on to her bed. Ahmed has become the first Iraqi to be been flown to the USA to be treated for her injuries. Ahmed is now at the University of Michigan trauma burns unit, one of the top units in the country where she is being treated for free.

Accompanying her was her mother who had persuaded the Pentagon, the US government and the General in command Tommy Franks to allow her daughter to get the vital treatment she needs, Rogers explains. Ahmed and her mother were escorted out of Iraq by the army and took a long and exhausting flight to Detroit. They traveled without passports or visas and were allowed entry to the US under humanitarian patrol, asserts Rogers.

In an interview with a doctor in the burns unit, Rogers discovers that the department were all fully supportive of the mission to get Ahmed treatment at the unit and that it was an "instinctual response" when they heard her story. The moment she arrived her treatment started.

Speaking to Ahmed's mother, Rogers found that her approach was positive. She said that although th US had initially caused the injury to her daughter through the bombing, they were now helping her. Rogers concludes that transportation to the burns unit has given Ahmed hope as in Iraq it is impossible to find the sterile environment needed to begin treating her injuries.

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