Jiro Ose

SOS from Iraq

Walking through the 2nd floor of Red Crescent hospital in Amman, Jordan, you bear witness to the devastation the war and ensuing violence have brought upon the civilian population on a daily basis in Iraq. Because of the curfew, lack of safety and medical supplies, hospitals inside Iraq cannot perform long and complicated surgery. They are the lucky ones (referring to a selected few who are brought to the hospital to the program by Medecins Sans Frontiers , MSF, France),” said Dr. Nasser, an Iraqi plastic surgeon who preferred that only his first name to be used. Because of the escalating violence, MSF France pulled their international staff from Iraq three years ago. Now they assist Iraqi hospitals across the border by providing drugs and medical supplies. They also set up a surgical program in cooperation with the Jordanian Red Crescent Hospital in Amman where they perform reconstructive surgery for patients who have been handicapped by injuries or incomplete procedures free of charge, including transportation from Iraq and back after the recovery.

Tibah , 12, plays with a mask during a group session with a psychotherapist.
  
Tariq standing on a newspaper, facing the direction of Mecca through an open window, conducts noon prayer. A thick bandage covers most of his head and chin. When asked what happened to him in Mosul in Northern Iraq, with pain and difficulty speaking due to the injury to his jaw, he tells the story about a snowy day in February 2005. He was driving his car with his neighbor and came across a check point manned by US soldiers. As he began to slow to stop at the checkpoint, soldiers started firing and a single bullet pieced through his face, shattering several bones and teeth. His car finally stopped and as he bled on the driver’s seat, soldiers dragged him out of the car and started beating him. His neighbor, who was working as a translator begged the soldiers in English to stop. When the neighbor finally convinced them that Tariq was not a threat and they released him, he was rushed to a near-by emergency room.
   
Mohamad, 37, receives a physical therapy from Faris Baniysen, Jordanian physiotherapist, on his hospital bet at Red Crescent Hospital in Amman, Jordan Monday, November 12, 2007. Oil ministry employee, was trying to flag a taxi to get to work when a car bomb exploded, and a piece of car landed on him, receiving multiple fracture on his body on March 2006, and later his right leg was amputated. He said that a doctor told him that the amputation could have been avoided if there is better medical care available. “I want to improve despite of everything.” One of his brother died recently in car bombing, 5 months after his own.
     
  
Mohamad tries on a prosthetic leg he recently was fitted with on February 28. 2008.
   
In August of 2004, he was caught in crossfire in a village near Basra in Southern Iraq when a firefight between British forces and the Mahdi army, a Shiia militia, broke out. The bullet shattered his bones. Metal rods and screws now prevent his leg from falling apart. For three long years in Iraq, Mohamad was unable to receive proper treatment which would enable him to walk again.
  
Faris and a nurse transfer his little brother Abdulla, an 11-year old boy from Baghdad, to a wheeled bed for surgery. He was walking through a crowded market in his neighborhood with his mother and aunt in May last year when an enormous car bomb explosion ripped through the market. His mother and aunt suffered minor injuries but Abdullah was not so lucky, and he was rushed to a near-by hospital. Doctors at the hospital were overwhelmed by serious injuries coming in and they could only give him emergency treatment. Abdullah’s right arm and leg were amputated to save his life. His left foot received severe trauma from the bomb blast and it is curled up like a crab foot. He was brought to Jordan for further reconstructive surgery.
     
  
His left foot received severe trauma from the bomb blast and it is curled up like a crab foot.
  
After 7 hours of surgery, a team of doctors have succeeded in reconstructing the left foot of Abdullah. Two months of physiotherapy await him. His right leg will be fitted with a prosthetic and he will walk again. “He was an excellent painter,” says Abdullah’s older brother, Faris. He said his right-handed brother missed 2 years of school already because of his injuries, but started to use his left had to paint. Because his arm is completely amputated, doctors have told him that an ordinary prosthetic arm will not give him mobility. “I heard they have the one that works for my brother in Germany. God willing, I hope I can get it for him someday.”
  
Dressed in a bright pink track suit, 9-year-old Malak goes through her daily physiotherapy in silence. She does not talk much these days mainly due to the pain she suffers after being severely burned in a roadside bombing in Kirkuk 3 years ago. The heat of the explosion was so intense that several fingers on both hands were melted. During the session, Chiara Retis, an Italian physiotherapist uses a doll to try to distract and ease Malak as Jordanian physiotherapist, Faris Baniysen, exercises what is left of her fingers ever so gently.
     
  
Abdullah, 7, is playing with balloons in a children’s room created in a local hotel where the patients spend time to recover. The day after his grandfather was shot to death, Abdullah, then 6, stood with his father at the funeral tent in Baghdad. After a bomb exploded at a market down the street, neighbors began rushing toward the scene. Then the second attack came to them near the tent they were standing by.For three days, relatives looked for Abdullah in Baghdad’s hospitals until they found him in a hospital where he had been driven by a neighbor. During that time, his father was recovering at another hospital of his own injuries begging his brothers for news of Abdullah. In December 2006, Abdullah flew to Jordan, escorted by an uncle. His father soon followed, in part to seek treatment himself. He has lost his left foot, he face was crashed and lost his left eye, and has gone through 6 surgeries so far.
   
Abdullah attends a therapy session at MSF facility in Amman, Jordan Feb. 29, 2008.
  
Abdullah's father keeps the photo of Abdullah before the car bomb explosion.
     
  
Dr. Andre Eckardt, German surgeon flew in for Abdullah and other patients, consults with another Iraqi surgeon for the case of Abdullah March 4, 2008.
  
Dr. Eckardt explains the surgery to his father through an interpreter.
  
Father of Abdullah reads passage in Koran before surgery March 4, 2008.
     
  
Father of Abdullah reads passage in Koran before surgery March 4, 2008.
  
Dr. Eckardt and two Iraqi surgeons perform facial surgery on Abdullah March 4, 2008.
  
Dr. Eckardt and two Iraqi surgeons perform facial surgery on Abdullah March 4, 2008.