NEW YORK — Almost a year after the Iraq war began, Ahmed Sharif, then just 6 years old, had a strange feeling as he walked home from school on an empty Baghdad street.

"It was quite scary to walk alone on that street which was completely deserted, apart from a group of American soldiers who were pointing their guns at me," said the now 15-year-old Sharif.

Then, a bomb exploded, tearing off his right arm and blinding him.

But Sharif became one of a few victims of the now decade-long war who was sent to the United States for medical care, with the help of American-based aid organizations. He is one of still fewer who has started a new life here.

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New life in New York
Sharif found his way to the United States after his elder brother, Saad, registered him with a U.S. military treatment center in Baghdad in early 2004. From there his case was referred to the New York-based Global Medical Relief Fund, an nonprofit organization that provides treatment for young victims of war, natural disaster or illness.

Global Medical Relief Fund, based in New York, together with the Los Angeles-based Assyrian Medical Society, have brought about 50 war-affected Iraqi children to America for medical care.

"I heard about his case and I immediately flew to bring him to the U.S.," said Elissa Montanti, the 59-year-old founder of the Global Medical Relief fund. "I just felt his darkness, but he has a sense of humor, and that hope inspired me to help him."

Since its inception in 1997, the fund has helped 160 children from 22 different countries receive medical treatment. Afterwards some have resettled permanently in the United States, Canada or Europe, while others have returned to their home countries.

"We don't want to help more than eight to nine kids [in a year] because we want to treat our kids like family, not numbers," said Montanti whose organization is mainly funded through private donors.

The Iraq war had a devastating effect on Iraqi civilians. The Iraqi government estimates that 239,133 Iraqi nationals were injured from 2004 through 2011 due to "terrorism and acts of violence." But the severe shortage of physicians in Iraq means that many victims of the war have not gotten adequate medical attention.

While 34,000 physicians were registered with the Iraqi Medical Association in the 1990s, by 2008 there were only around 16,000 for the country of 31 million, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Due to his extreme disabilities, Sharif relocated to New York full-time and Montanti became his legal guardian so he could stay in the country.

He now goes to school to study braille, the language for the blind, among other classes. While Montati takes care of his basic needs, he lives with other kids receiving medical treatment in a four-bedroom house funded by the charity.

His best friend is his housemate Ngawang Tsestin, 15, who lost both arms in an accident in his native Tibet. Sharif is never expected to see again but, that has not stopped him from playing the piano and singing.

And he gets help from Tsestin.

"I am his hands and he is my eyes," says Sharif. "Whenever we watch a movie, he narrates it to me. And he helps me with walking on the road so that I don't run into people."

'Gave me hope'
On the West coast, the Los Angeles-based Assyrian Medical Society has helped 300 children from different countries, many from Iraq, receive medical treatment.

Samer Butrus was 12-year-old when he lost his left leg and was severely injured in his right leg after a bomb exploded on his family’s farm in northern Iraq. After waiting more than four years for medical help, Butrus's dad connected with a local representative of the society and he was sent to the United States for care in 2008.

"It's hard to live away from my family and friends, but if I were in Iraq, my life there would have been limited to a wheelchair," Butrus said in a telephone interview.

Now 21 years old, he is now studying business and aspires to be an accountant in Windsor, Canada, where he lives with his mother after being granted asylum there.

"I was in search of hope after my injury and that's exactly what the society gave me. They gave me hope of a better life," said Butrus. "Whatever happened is behind me, my leg won’t come back, every day is a new day now."

Related links: 

10 years later, Iraq's impact still pervades Republic Party 

Iraq War 10 Years Later: Where Are They Now?

Iraq, 10 years on: Did invasion bring 'hope and progress' to millions as Bush vowed? 

 

 

Updated at 2:45 p.m. ET: LONDON -- Malala Yousufzai, the 14-year-old Pakistani schoolgirl shot in the head by the Taliban, has every chance of making a "good recovery," British doctors said on Monday as she arrived at a hospital in central England for treatment of her severe wounds.

Yousufzai, who was shot for advocating education for girls, was flown from Pakistan to receive specialist treatment at a unit at Birmingham's Queen Elizabeth Hospital that has expertise in dealing with complex trauma cases. The unit has treated hundreds of soldiers wounded in Afghanistan.

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"Doctors... believe she has a chance of making a good recovery on every level," said Dr. Dave Rosser, the hospital's medical director, adding that her treatment and rehabilitation could take months.

He told reporters Yousufzai, whose shooting has drawn widespread condemnation, had not yet been assessed by British medics but said she would not have been brought to Britain at all if her prognosis was not good.

TV footage showed a patient, believed to be the schoolgirl, being rushed from an ambulance into the hospital surrounded by a large team of medical staff.

She will undergo scans to reveal the extent of her injuries, but Rosser said doctors could not provide any further details without her agreement.

Pakistani surgeons removed a bullet from near the girl's spinal cord during a three-hour operation the day after the attack last week, but she now needs intensive specialist follow-up care. Treatment is likely to include repairing damaged bones in her skull and complex neurological follow-up.

"Injuries to bones in the skull can be treated very successfully by the neurosurgeons and the plastic surgeons, but it is the damage to the blood supply to the brain that will determine long-term disability," said Duncan Bew, consultant trauma surgeon at Barts Health NHS Trust in London. Judging the best way forward in such difficult cases requires a wide range of experienced medics working as a team.

"In trauma, it is really the coordinated impact of intensive care that is critical. It's not just about keeping the patient alive but also maximising their rehabilitation potential. With neurological injuries that is paramount," Bew said.

Doctors said youth was on her side since a young brain has more ability to recover from injury than a mature one.

"On the positive side, Malala has passed two major hurdles - the removal of the bullet and the very critical 48-hour window after surgery," said Anders Cohen, head of neurosurgery at the Brooklyn Hospital Center in New York.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Yousufzai would receive specialized care in a hospital in the country’s National Health Service system.

"Last week's barbaric attack on Malala Yousufzai and her school friends shocked Pakistan and the world.  Malala's bravery in standing up for the right of all young girls in Pakistan to an education is an example to us all,” Hague said in a statement.

Queen Elizabeth Hospital is the main receiving facility for British soldiers wounded in Afghanistan, and the spokeswoman said the staff were confident they would be able to provide Yousufzai with the necessary care.

Read more on this story at ITV News

Earlier, a medical team from the United Arab Emirates decided that Yousufzai would require prolonged care to recover fully from the physical and psychological trauma, a Pakistani military statement said before she left for Britain. The panel of doctors recommended she receive treatment abroad, the statement said.

Yousufzai's family was consulted and their wishes were taken into consideration, according to the military.

Attacked while leaving school
Yousufzai was leaving school in her hometown in the Swat Valley in northwest Pakistan on Oct. 9 when she was shot in the head and neck by the Taliban for speaking out against the militants and promoting education for girls.

Yousufzai, a cheerful schoolgirl who had wanted to become a doctor before agreeing to her father's wishes that she strive to be a politician, has become a potent symbol of resistance against the Taliban's efforts to deprive girls of education.

On Sunday, tens of thousands rallied in Pakistan's largest city in support of Yousufzai.

The demonstration in the southern city of Karachi was by far the largest since Yousufzai and two of her classmates were shot.

Still, most government officials have refrained from publicly criticizing the Taliban by name over the attack, in what critics say is a lack of resolve against extremism. 

Opponents of Pakistan's government and military say the shooting is another example of the state's failure to tackle militancy, the biggest threat to the stability of the nuclear-armed South Asian country.

The shooting of Yousufzai was the culmination of years of campaigning that had pitted the young girl against one of Pakistan's most ruthless Taliban commanders, Maulana Fazlullah.

‘Public revulsion and condemnation’
The attack horrified people inside and outside Pakistan and sparked hope among some that it would prompt the government to intensify its fight against the Taliban and their allies.

“The public revulsion and condemnation of this cowardly attack shows that the people of Pakistan will not be beaten by terrorists.  The U.K. stands shoulder to shoulder with Pakistan in its fight against terrorism,” Britain’s Hague said in his statement.

But protests against the shooting have been relatively small until now, usually attracting no more than a few hundred people.

That response pales in comparison to the tens of thousands of people who held violent protests in Pakistan last month against a film produced in the United States that denigrated Islam's Prophet Muhammad.

Fresh Taliban attack
The Taliban struck again on Sunday night, attacking the police outpost near Peshawar with rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire, according to Reuters. Security officials said at least six policemen were killed, including two who were beheaded.

Seven policemen are still missing and presumed kidnapped. Several police cars and an armored vehicle were torched.

Complete World coverage on NBCNews.com

The Taliban has been blamed for many suicide bombings across Pakistan and have also staged sophisticated, high-profile attacks on the military, one of the biggest in the world.

Pakistan's interior minister said police had dispatched guards to protect journalists who had been threatened by Taliban militants angered by coverage of Yousufzai's case.

The Taliban, based mostly in the unruly ethnic Pashtun tribal areas near the Afghan border, have said they would now try to kill her father, a headmaster of a girls' school in Swat.

Reuters and NBC News' Fakhar Rehman contributed to this report.

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A majority of doctors in a United Kingdom survey supported measures to deny non-emergency medical services to smokers and the obese, The Observer newspaper reported Sunday.

Although the survey by the networking website doctors.net.uk was a self-selecting poll, the site's chief executive called the response "a tectonic shift" for the profession.

The results feed into a British debate about "lifestyle rationing" by the National Health Service, the Observer reported.

The survey by doctors.net.uk, which claims nearly 192,000 members, found that 593, or 54 percent, of the 1,096 doctors who participated answered yes to this question: "Should the NHS be allowed to refuse non-emergency treatments to patients unless they lose weight or stop smoking?"

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Doctors who approved gave a few examples, The Observer said:

• Denying in-vitro fertilization to childless women who smoke was justified because the procedure was only half as successful for them as for non-smokers.
• Obese or alcoholic patients should be expected to change their behaviors before undergoing liver transplant surgery.

Doctors and patients who oppose lifestyle rationing call the approach blackmail that denies the sick their human rights, The Observer said.

Dr. Tim Ringrose, doctors.net.uk's chief executive, told The Observer the findings represent a significant change in doctors' attitudes, considering that the health service must save 20 billion pounds ($32.5 billion) by 2015.

"This might appear to be only a slim majority of doctors in favor of limiting treatment to some patients who fail to look after themselves, but it represents a tectonic shift for a profession that has always sought to provide free healthcare from the cradle to the grave," Ringrose said.

Dr. Clare Gerada, chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners, told The Observer the NHS should deliver care according to need.

“Clearly, giving up smoking is a good thing,” Gerada told The Observer. “But blackmailing people by telling them that they have to give up isn't what doctors should be doing."

Clinical advice about lifestyle changes are another matter, other doctors said.

"Lifestyles contribute to risk and sometimes they may make treatments too risky to undertake,” John Saunders, chair of the Royal College of Physicians ethics committees, told The Observer. “But that's quite different to saying, 'I'm not going to give you surgery because you smoke or are overweight.'"

Some UK private care trusts already ban in-vitro fertilization, breast reconstructions and hip and knee replacements for smokers and the obese, The Observer said.

Dr. Michael Ingram, chair of Red House Clinical Commissioning Group in Hertfordshire, last month wrote in the doctors' website Pulse that "Rationing is dressed up as science."

"Where does this go next? Will we deny IVF to those who have had pelvic inflammatory disease because of its association with sexual promiscuity?" Ingram wrote.

In the United States, debates have been held on withholding liver transplants for alcoholics and coronary artery bypass surgery for smokers, although no ban is in place.

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