Hope for young Ali

Hope for young Ali

By Jonathan Duffy BBC News Online in Kuwait City

His terrible injuries will have caused many to despair but there may be hope for young Ali after all.

A leading doctor, who is taking charge of the boy's care, believes he could be out of hospital in as little as two weeks.

Ali's plight has moved the world

Ali Ismail Abbas has become a symbol of the appalling ravages of war after his home was bombed during the coalition forces' attack on Baghdad.

The 12-year-old boy lost both his arms and suffered serious burns to his upper body.

Both his parents were also killed in the strike, along with other relatives, and it was feared Ali could die from his injuries

But following an initial diagnosis, Dr Imad al-Najjadah expects Ali to make rapid progress. Dr Najjadah is leading a team of medics who will look after Ali following his evacuation from Baghdad to Kuwait on Tuesday.

Ali's picture has been splashed across newspapers around the world and even UK Prime Minister Tony Blair was moved to comment on his plight.

He was pleased to see his uncle by his bedside and has even started to smile

Dr Imad al-Najjadah

He was airlifted to Kuwait City in the small hours of Wednesday morning and immediately transferred to an intensive care unit.

A relative accompanied him on the trip.

"Ali has about 35% of his body covered in burns, " said Dr Najjadah.

While the figure hints at his appalling wounds, it is not as high as the 60% originally diagnosed by the boy's carers in Iraq.

The wounds are, however, infected because disruptions caused by the war meant doctors in Iraq did not have the facilities to properly treat Ali.

Skin grafts

On Wednesday he will undergo his first operation. Dead tissue will be removed from his raw wounds on the abdomen and chest and the infected areas will be cleaned.

"There was a lot of dirt under the dressings. It was very nasty. Cleaning him will help stabalise him more and when that happens his fever should drop."

Ali could be fitted with prosthetic limbs

Once the preparation is complete, Dr Najjadah, a specialist in plastic surgery, will use skin imported from the Netherlands to cover the wounds and prevent any further infection.

This will all take place in the first session of surgery.

It will then be a four or five days before Ali goes back into the operating theatre for skin grafts.

Dr Najjadah anticipates two operations in which skin will be removed first from the orphan boy's thigh and then back, and grafted with flesh in the affected areas.

Each operation will take between two to three hours.

In the few hours that Ali has been in the care of the Kuwaitis, he has made progress says the doctor.

"He is much better this morning than when he arrived. He was pleased to see his uncle by his bedside and has even started to smile."

If Ali recovers as expected, he will then be assessed and sized for prosthetic limbs in place of his lost arms.

The severity of Ali's burns may actually have helped him survive this far.

Because they are "full thickness" burns that penetrated deep into the flesh, his nerve endings in that part of the body have been severed.

Other young victims

The centre where Ali is being cared is as good - if not better - as those in many Western countries.

Opened in 1992 at Kuwait City's Ibn Sina hospital, it has 70 beds, making it the biggest burns and plastic surgery centre in the whole of the Middle East and Europe, said Dr Najjadah.

While Ali's injuries have shocked many around the world, the doctor says this is by no means the worst he has dealt with.

"Thirty-five per cent burns is nothing compared to what we sometimes see here - 80% or 90% burns. But even those patients can recover."

Before Ali's arrival, the centre had already taken in five Iraqi children whose injuries from the war were so severe they had to be evacuated from their home country.

One of those is four-year-old Farah Arkan al-Jebory, who suffered serious shrapnel wounds when her father's car was destroyed in another Baghdad bomb attack.

Shrapnel had severed the muscle in her right forearm, although, fortunately, it did not cut the nerves.

She also suffered multiple injuries to the abdomen in the blast, which killed a cousin of hers.

Doctors have been able to repair the damaged muscle and Farah is making a good recovery, says Dr Najjadah.