Iraqi infant to be treated in Israel
The Jerusalem Post.
November 25, 2003.
By MATTHEW GUTMAN.
Bayan, a Kurdish-Iraqi week-old infant with a deadly heart defect, will
be brought to Israel in the coming days for an operation, thanks to the
help of Israeli doctors, international human rights workers, Foreign Ministry
officials, and their American and Iraqi counterparts, The Jerusalem Post
learned Monday.
Until the American army liberated Iraq in April, Israel was technically at war with Iraq – a country whose former leader, Saddam Hussein, rarely missed an opportunity to call for the destruction of the Jewish state.
The move could be a harbinger of future informal contacts between Israel and the fledgling democratic Iraq.
Bayan's journey began in her hometown of Dakuk, near Kirkuk. There, the infant was diagnosed with a heart defect by an American military doctor who was screening local infants. If untreated, the defect, a congenital heart disease called Transposition of the Great Arteries (TGA), could be fatal. Iraq's medical system has neither the expertise nor the equipment to treat the disease.
Bayan's family name has been omitted for the family's protection.
Jonathan Miles, who has spent much of the past decade ferrying ailing Palestinian children to Israeli hospitals, proposed that Bayan be sent to Israel for treatment. Her family, which like many among the local population had lived close to Iraqi Jews before their expulsion in the late 1940s and 1950s, posed no objections.
Split-second decisions between Iraqi doctors and their Israeli counterparts were made over US Army satellite phones, Bayan and her family were issued travel permits, and a flight was arranged. Iraqi officials' alacrity in providing Bayan's family travel permits for the journey to Israel via Jordan, might signal the future government's willingness to normalize relations with Israel.
After arriving in Amman on Friday, Bayan is waiting for permission to enter Israel from the Israeli Embassy in Jordan.
The operation, to be conducted at Holon's Wolfson Hospital, is highly complex, said hospital staff. Doctors working under the aegis of Save A Child's Heart – an Israeli non-profit based at Wolfson that has provided free treatment to about 1,000 children world-wide since 1995 – are to operate as soon as Bayan arrives.
Miles spent five years in Rafah trying to secure medical treatment for ailing Palestinian children in Israeli hospitals. He founded Shevet Achim, a Christian, Israel-based non-profit organization, in 1994, to help provide medical service at Israeli medical centers for sick Arab children.
As many as a third of the beneficiaries of the Save A Child's Heart foundation have been Palestinian, said director Simon Fisher. But, as in the case of the Palestinians, the Shin Bet's screening of the family's security history might be a final hurdle in their journey to Israel.
"I would love to see many more sick children come to Israel," said Miles.
