About The times. (Gainesville, Ga.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 19, 2018)
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. PAIDADVERTISEMENT 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 of California, Davis, have discovered a new compound that has the amazing ability to reverse the aging process in cells, extending lifespan and restoring health. 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