Deaf Iraqi Girl to Get Treatment in U.S.

MIAMI -- Three-year-old Amina can't hear the bombs and bullets that rake through Baghdad. The Iraqi girl has been deaf since birth.

Her family is too poor to pay for advanced surgeries that could restore her hearing, so until recently a soundless life seemed certain.

With the help of the U.S. Army in Iraq and the International Kids Fund, a Miami-based aid group, Amina was flown to the United States on July 30 for a procedure at the University of Miami Jackson Memorial Medical Center.

The IKF, which has brought more than 125 children from around the world to Miami for treatments, launched an effort Friday to raise $40,000 to pay for a cochlear implant to be surgically placed in Amina's ear. The device turns sound into electrical impulses that activate the hearing nerve, allowing the deaf to hear.

The journey from Baghdad to the United States began with an e-mail.

A friend of Amina's father in Iraq contacted a friend in the U.S. Eventually, an e-mail reached Col. Warner Anderson, an Army special forces doctor.

Anderson had been in Iraq in 2003 with the 352nd Civil Affairs Command and had made a lot of contacts. While back in the U.S., he started making telephone calls and his wife, Ruth Macias de Anderson, a registered nurse, sent an e-mail to a doctor whom she once worked with in New Mexico.

Dr. Thomas Balkany is now at the University of Miami's Miller School of Medicine and is chairman of the otolaryngology department that specializes in cochlear implants. He agreed to do the surgery.

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