Category — Case Profiles

Doctors performed a successful surgery on Mina, removing the tumors from her left eyelid, which were obstructing her vision in both eyes, and threatening to blind her left eye. This surgery will restore normal vision. Doctors also removed the ugly growths from her ears. DAI arranged and paid for this surgery.

After the surgery, Mina’s family (her parents and brothers) sent a message of thanks:

Countries and people are different. Only love makes us the same. We are very grateful to everyone who helped Mina. We will never forget your help. God bless you all.

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Early on the morning of February 15, 2004, Hiwa went, as he did every day, to the market in Kirkuk where people or companies in need of laborers hired workers on a daily basis. On this day Hiwa wasn’t told where he would be working, but was driven for two hours to the American military base in Tikrit where he worked from 8:00 in the morning till 3:00 in the afternoon. On the drive back to Kirkuk with four other workers, a car pulled in front of their vehicle and exploded. Hiwa only remembers the sound of the explosion and feeling heat. He then fell into a coma for 15 days.

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Buthaina in Amman, Summer 2007

When Cindy Sheehan (co-founder of the antiwar group Gold Star Families for Peace and mother of slain US soldier Casey Sheehan, for whom “Camp Casey” in Crawford, Texas, was named) visited Buthaina with DAI team members last summer, she wrote an appeal for funds that was able to help significantly with meeting Buthaina’s needs. After months in Amman, Buthaina had improved enough to be able to recently return to Iraq - a good thing, because funds her family had raised for her care had also been exhausted.

Our friend Buthaina continues to need our help, as her journey of healing continues.

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Four-and-a-half-year-old Mina’s mother took a medicine called Tinifar - which is now known to cause birth defects - during her first two weeks of pregnancy in early 2003. When the war started in March, there were many explosions in her area and she lost touch with her husband, who was in Baghdad, for 20 days. The trauma of the war and the uncertainty of her husband’s fate made her pregnancy very difficult, but only when Mina was born in October with an opening at the back of her head and abnormal growths in her eyes and ears did the extent of the problem become apparent.

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Just before 8 in the morning in early December 2007, 18-year-old Saba was riding in the bus she and her friends used to get to college in Baghdad when a young man boarded and asked to be taken to a different university. When the driver refused, the young man insisted and then pulled out a pistol and shot the driver numerous times, killing him. The man then turned to Saba and shot her as well. The bullet entered her left shoulder and exited from her back, after breaking several vertebrae and damaging her spinal cord.

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In the summer of 2006 Sahla was in her garage baking bread while her husband and children were out when a car bomb went off outside her home, causing the oven she was using to explode. Sahla’s neighbors heard her screaming and came to her aid, putting out the fire with blankets and calling her husband, who came home and took her to the nearest hospital.

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I met Haifa’a for the first time two months ago. She was very sad, and she was desperately worried about her future, because she couldn’t see, and because of her other injuries. With no children and no husband to help her, she didn’t know what to do, alone in Jordan except for her sister. Haifa’a’s daily routine has for months consisted of praying, crying and waiting for a miracle to see again.

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Wasim is 9 years old. His young parents came with him from Iraq seeking treatment, since the medical facilities in Iraq had been devastated by sanctions and then by the ongoing war and occupation. Wasim has been mostly blind since birth, despite having had several surgeries in Jordan intended to improve his vision. His family needs support to help their son see clearly for the first time.

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DAI team members in the US and the Middle East have been working for months to find help for Rasul, an Iraqi boy shot through both eyes in a firefight in Baghdad. We have just learned that — thanks to the generosity of DAI supporters — medical treatment to help restore his sight may soon be a reality.

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Hussein S. was a student attending the technology institute near his home in the Baghdad neighborhood of Al-Adel. On his way to school on February 2nd, 2006, the thirty year-old suffered several serious injuries from a roadside bomb targeting an American military vehicle. While he sustained various shrapnel wounds to his neck, torso, and extremities, it was Hussein’s head that received the most damage from the explosion. A large portion of his skull was shattered, and additional pieces of the bomb were lodged in his brain. Hussein also lost his left eye, as well as his hearing due to the intense noise generated by the explosion.

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