A doctor’s tale

Eight-month-old Wazir was a desperate case. Born with a severe congenital heart disease, he had no chance to survive. But his stubborn Yazidi parents, who last year fled their mountain village, barely escaping the Islamic State bloody slaughter in Sinjar, managed reach the Children’s Hospital in Duhok. Wazir was in very poor conditions and the doctors thought he was going to die in a matter of days. Luckily a young surgeon happened to be there and he didn’t share his collegues’ view: the little boy, he mantained, could be saved.

It was a risky open heart operation but he had the skills to perform it. Just back in his country from Milan and Boston, where he earned a high level specialization in pediatric surgery, Halkawt Nuri went ahead with the 8 hours operation and saved Wazir’s life. He now plays with his four brothers under a tent in the crowded Kabarto refugee camp, hidden among the dusty barren slopes rolling down towards the Mosul lake.

It’s not a good time for Kurdistan. The falling oil prices and the burden of 2 million refugees, combined with a looming political crisis, the Is threat at the borders and the Turkish air strikes on the Pkk hideouts in the mountains are gathering a perfect storm. Whilst refugee camps are sprawling, hotels and office buildings are somberly vacant, foreign investments and public works have stopped, unemployment is on the rise and the state coffers are almost dry. That’s why people like doctor Halkawt deserve our praise and support.

He always wanted to be a surgeon, even when as a teenager he studied piano at the Music Academy in Erbil. Then he graduated in medicine, went abroad to specialize in the best universities and got addicted to the OT. Doctor Halkawt could easily find a well paid job in Europe or the US, but decided to come back. He’s now the only pediatric heart surgeon in the country. “I felt I had to do something for my people” he says.

Thousands of critically ill children like Wazir are on the waiting list.