Iraqis Bear Scars of War Amid Shortage of Surgeons

[Barrett808]

Iraqis Bear Scars of War Amid Shortage of Surgeons
BY JAMES PALMER

BAGHDAD -- Teba Furat, 4, still has the scars from a roadside bomb that scorched her face and hands, and charred most of the hair from her scalp.

Allah Shaker, 25, says she rarely sleeps because it hurts to lower her eyelids, which were singed when a sabotaged propane tank blew up in her family's kitchen. The face and hands of her 14-year-old sister, Khauffan, were so warped from burns that she refuses to return to school.

Ayat Jamal, 10, was driven into the ground and badly burned when a car loaded with explosives detonated in a frenzied Baghdad bus station. Unable to walk on her broken left ankle or hold a crutch in her damaged right arm, Ayat has been confined to bed the past year.

These cases are just a teardrop in an ocean of civilian combat casualties here that require the type of extensive reconstructive and plastic surgery most Iraqis are unlikely to ever receive.

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http://www.newhouse.com/archive/palmer071306.html