Newspaper Page Text
4A Monday, November 19, 2018
The Times, Gainesville, Georgia | gainesvilletimes.com
NATION/WORLD
Iraqi war victims turn
to social media to find
some medical assistance
HADI MIZBAN I Associated Press
Plastic surgeon Dr. Abbas al-Sahan, left, talks to Saja Ahmed
Saleem, who was injured in an explosion in 2007, before her
reconstructive surgery in Baghdad, Iraq, Tuesday, Nov. 6.
BY SINAN SALAHEDDIN
Associated Press
BAGHDAD — It was
spring 2007 in northern Iraq
when 6-year-old Saja Saleem
raced home from school
with the good news about
her excellent grades, hoping
to receive the gift her father
had promised her.
“All of a sudden, I found
myself spinning into the air
with fire trailing from my
school uniform after a loud
boom,” Saleem, now 17,
recounted to The Associated
Press.
Saleem lost her eyesight,
right arm and an ear in the
explosion, set off by a road
side bomb. Months later, her
disfiguring injuries forced
her to drop out of school
after other students com
plained about her “scary
face.”
Feeling helpless, Saleem
recently turned to social
media to find help. Eventu
ally, her appeal grabbed the
attention of a surgeon who
offered free treatment.
Others have also reached
out on social media.
Emotional videos and
photographs of Iraqis with
war wounds and disabilities
have overwhelmed social
media platforms, mainly
Facebook, widely used in
Iraq.
The widespread violence
unleashed by the 2003 top
pling of Saddam Hussein and
the 2014-2017 battle against
the Islamic State group has
wounded hundreds of thou
sands of Iraqis. Many are
maimed and scarred, their
suffering lingering long
after the violence subsides.
Poor medical services,
scarcity of specialized staff
and medical centers, and
poverty have exacerbated
the suffering. Those who
cannot get treatment at
state-run hospitals and can
not afford private clinics are
looking to social media plat
forms to make appeals.
Appeals are posted on the
personal Facebook pages of
patients or on the pages of
aid organizations and pub
lic figures with tens of thou
sands of followers. Patients
describe their condition
along with contact details.
Messages are also distrib
uted on platforms like What-
sApp and Viber.
Saleem and her family
recall the explosion that
upended her life, and the
years that followed as they
struggled financially to get
her treatment.
“When I hit the ground,
I felt severe pain all over
my body .. I was bleeding,
a pool of blood around me
.. everything turned dark
and I lost consciousness,”
she recalled from her bed
at a Baghdad hospital where
she is undergoing free
reconstructive and plastic
surgeries.
Saleem’s mother, Khawla
Omar Hussein, remembers
her daughter’s screams
when three weeks later, she
regained consciousness and
realized she had lost her
right arm and ear.
“She woke up screaming,
crying: ‘Mammy, mammy’,”
Hussein recalled. “Then she
asked: ‘Why can’t I see and
why is everything dark?”’
They told her it was the
bandages over her eyes and
that she would see after they
were removed. When that
day came, the doctors told
her she had lost both eyes.
Nearly two years later,
Saleem’s family tried to
send her back to school
where she was accepted
only as a “listener” in class,
accompanying her broth
ers. But that arrangement
ended soon as other students
and teachers complained
that her disfigured face was
bothering them.
“I was crying day and
night and became a very
reclusive person,” Saleem
said.
After the state-run hospi
tal couldn’t go beyond the
necessary treatment to save
her life, Saleem’s family
looked for plastic and recon
structive surgery for her
at a private clinic, but they
couldn’t afford the doctor’s
$7,500 fee.
Then, late last year, her
mother made an appeal,
posting photographs of Sal
eem and details about her
ordeal in a public group on
Viber. Days later, Baghdad-
based Dr. Abbas al-Sahan,
one of Iraq’s best plastic
surgeons, offered to do free
surgeries.
Since January, Saleem
has undergone four surger
ies — first so her face could
accommodate the two glass
eyes, or ocular prostheses,
then a procedure to reduce
some of the scars. She also
had a surgery to adjust to a
prosthetic arm and is due
to have plastic surgery to
reconstruct her missing ear,
al-Sahan said.
Al-Sahan runs the only
state-run specialized hospi
tal for reconstructive and
plastic surgery in Iraq. He
said that about 40 percent
of the monthly surgeries
his hospital preforms —
between 600 to 850 — are
for victims of bombings and
other war-related explo
sions, as well as for casual
ties of military operations.
Saleem’s family feels she
is lucky. Not everyone gets
the help they need through
social media.
Education Department
investigates claims against
unequal women’s programs
BY MARIA DANILOVA
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — At home in Turkey,
Kursat Pekgoz considered himself a femi
nist. In the world of American higher educa
tion, where he is now pursuing a doctorate
in English literature, the 30-year-old activ
ist says it is men who are being treated
unfairly.
Arguing that campus resource groups
for women and women’s studies programs
amount to discrimination against men, Pek
goz has filed federal complaints against
several universities with the backing of the
National Coalition for Men, an American
men’s rights organization.
The Education Department is taking the
complaints seriously. Over the last year, its
civil rights division has opened investiga
tions into Yale, Princeton, the University
of Southern California and Tulane Univer
sity to determine whether their women’s
programs violate Title IX, a federal law
that prohibits sex discrimination at schools
that receive federal funding. The depart
ment also has received complaints against
Georgetown, Northeastern and the Univer
sity of Pennsylvania.
With more women attending and graduat
ing from college than men in America, Pek
goz says women no longer need additional
support.
“Women are the majority, so I really can
not see how this is not discrimination against
men,” said Pekgoz, a student at the Univer
sity of Southern California. He studied Eng
lish literature in Turkey and moved to the
U.S. four years ago to pursue an advanced
degree. “We can’t keep living in the past on
these issues.”
While the number of women attending
college has grown significantly in recent
decades, women are still underrepresented
in science and technology and in leadership
positions in higher education.
Scholars say women’s studies and gen
der studies, as fields of academic study,
are open to men like any other. And advo
cates of initiatives targeting women in par
ticular say they are crucial to help them
succeed in a time when women continue
to earn less than men and sexual harass
ment remains widespread on campuses and
in the workplace.
“We still have a long way to go to reach
equity,” said Shawali Patel, an attorney with
the National Women’s Law Center.
The investigations come at a time when
President Donald Trump’s administra
tion is pushing ahead with a conservative
agenda on other fronts in higher education.
Administration officials are endorsing giv
ing greater rights to those accused of sexual
assault on campus and pushing back against
race-based affirmative action in admissions.
Carly Thomsen, a professor of feminist
studies at Vermont’s Middlebury College,
dismissed the complaints as a backlash
against women’s activism and the #MeToo
movement.
“They are trying to dress up their desire to
hold on to power as an equity issue,” Thom
sen said.
The complaints under investigation by the
Education Department describe opportuni
ties that appear to exclude men.
The Yale Women Innovators, a weekly
event series, is discriminatory, Pekgoz
argues, because it says it is open to “all Yale
women and non-binary femme students,
alumni, faculty staff, and community mem
bers.” At Princeton, he said in another com
plaint, the university treats male students
unfairly by offering a course on defending
against sexual assault only to women.
“Everything should be available on a gen
der-neutral basis,” Pekgoz said.
The Education Department is also looking
into whether the Cagney and Lacey Fellow
ship at the University of Southern California
shows prejudice against male applicants
because it is awarded to “a returning woman
student.”
Yale and USC said they are committed
to nondiscrimination. Princeton said the
school is providing the Education Depart
ment with the necessary information. Fol
lowing the complaint, Tulane University
is considering how to administer women’s
empowerment programs “without regard to
their sex.”
The Education Department said in a state
ment that it enforces Title IX so that “all stu
dents, including men, have equal access to
educational opportunity and can go to school
without fear of sex discrimination. ” It would
not comment on specific investigations.
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New Youth Restoring
Pill Helps You Grow
Biologically Younger
Based on groundbreaking research from UC Davis,
anti-aging pioneer creates the world’s first life-
extension pill that boosts the energy center of cells
By Ray Wilson
Associated Health Press
AHP - Researchers at the University
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The compound was immediately
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Research shows the pill works
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Scientists long believed this was
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Dr. Al Sears with fellow physician Dr. Oz at
the WPBF 25 Health & Wellness Festival
held in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.
some and successfully blended it into
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The University Study That
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Movement
Dr. Sears’ inspiration for Ultra
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THESE STATEMENTS HAVE
NOT
BEEN EVALUATED
BY
THE
FOOD
AND
DRUG
ADMINISTRATION.
THIS
PRODUCT IS NOT INTENDED
TO
DIAGNOSE. TREAT.
CURE
OR
PREVENT
ANY
DISEASE
RESULTS MAY
VARY.
