Expert Help For Deformed Babies

2:49pm UK, Thursday January 29, 2009

Lisa Holland, foreign affairs correspondent
A Sky News investigation into babies born with deformities in heavily-bombed areas of Iraq has led to the creation of an expert medical training programme.

Deformed baby Fatima Ahmed



Fatima Ahmed was born in Fallujah with deformities that include two heads

Eight months ago, Sky News reported the desperate calls for international help from families in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, where growing numbers of children were being born with deformities.

Concerns were increasing that the rise in deformities may have been linked to the use of chemical weapons by US forces.

Sky showed the plight of three-year-old Fatima Ahmed, who was born with two heads and could not see, hear or move by herself.

After seeing our report, professor Kypros Nicolaides of the Fetal Medicine Foundation in London offered to set up an expert training programme to help the babies.


And after months of paperwork and red tape, the first Iraqi doctor is about to travel to Jordan and London for the training programme.

Dr Muntaha Hashim, a 39-year-old prenatal care specialist, is one of the most senior doctors at Fallujah general hospital.

Her life has been dedicated to the welfare of those in her city and it is hoped that with the training ahead, she will return with a unique set of skills to help pregnant women and babies.

It is also hoped she will set up a birth deformity register, to reveal the extent of the problem.

In April and November 2004, Fallujah suffered some of the heaviest bombardments of the Iraq war.

The US military said it used the banned weapon white phosphorus, but primarily as a smokescreen - permitted under international law.

When used as an incendiary weapon, however, the chemical can cause serious burns and is linked to deformities in new-born children.

Hikmat Tawfeeq, deputy chairman of the Fallujah-based human rights group Alakhiyar, told Sky News last May: "We have around 200 cases of deformities recorded by our society. Most of these cases are birth deformities which have arisen after the bombing of Fallujah."

At one cemetery in Fallujah, undertaker Mahmoud Hummadi said he usually buried four to five bodies of newborns every day, most of them with deformities.