HELP IRAQI CHILDREN WITH DISABILITIES

                                          Help Iraqi Children with Disabilities

 Without help from Iraqi Children’s Hope, most Iraqi children who have disabilities will never receive help. Most average Iraqi families don't have knowledge of and/or don’t understand disabling conditions that occur in children. Additionally, most families are not able to afford diagnosis and treatment. As a result, ICHope is working to identify and provide services for as many children as possible. Our biggest challenge is in finding and identifying children who need our help, as they are normally kept in the home without any interaction with the community in general.

Last quarter, ICHope sent 6 more children for mental health diagnostics, to one of the two specialized centers in the treatment of children and adolescents with behavioral, emotional, and psychiatric difficulties that we partner with. By sending these children to the centers for diagnosis and treatment, we improve the outlook and the future of children who may feel hopeless and lost. In some cases, we save a child’s life.

We also aid two families who have children who are handicapped. We help them by providing special food, medicine, and diapers for these children.

Here are brief stories of two children we have helped:

Samana, 8 years old, suffers from atrophy of the mind. We sent her to a specialist doctor who diagnosed her and sent her to a special mental health center. Since then, Samana's overall health has shown improvement, and she started counting numbers and distinguishing colors. The doctor expects Saman will be better if she continues the treatment and training. Her mother is very happy that Samana is starting to get better.

One of ICHope’s work teams visited families to assess their living conditions. While in one home they found two children, a 7-year-old boy, and a 5-year-old girl, who are handicapped and who have speech problems. The work team found the situation to be exceedingly difficult as they observed the innocent children who could not live like other children because their family was poor, and their mother could not bear the costs of their treatment.

ICHope embraced the two children, aged 5 and 7 years, and sent them to s specialist to determine their condition. Now that the children have been properly diagnosed, they are under treatment and training with special doctors and staff.

We are enormously proud of our staff and volunteers who have been doing magnificent jobs to help children in need so they can get the treatment they need.

Total number of children we served last quarter: 18

Total of staff: 4

Total of volunteers: 7

Location: 2 specialized centers, plus 5 medical laboratories