http://media.www.dailytitan.com/media/storage/paper861/news/2008/02/19/Features/No.More.Victims.Aids.Suffering.Children.In.Iraq-3217565.shtmlNo More Victims aids suffering children in Iraq
The organization forms projects to provide medical aid and wellness to those in need
By: Beth Stirnaman
Issue date: 2/19/08 Section: Features
Asraa' Amir Mizyad was just 9 years old when the missile hit. The young student was walking home after taking a test at Al Najed primary school in Iraq when the U.S. military launched its attack. During the assault on Jan. 25, 1999, a large piece of shrapnel tore Asraa's arm from her body and left her with multiple chest and abdominal wounds. A piece of shrapnel that cannot be removed, for fear of killing her, will most likely remain lodged in her skull for the rest of her life.
Over a year after Asraa' lost her arm, photographer Alan Pogue met her while visiting Iraq. He was there to take part in a project to rebuild a water treatment plant in Basra. Pogue took a photo of Asraa' during his stay, not knowing the impact the photo would eventually have. Pogue went back to Iraq in 2002 and found Asraa' still in need of medical care. A friend of Pogue's named Cole Miller made a poster of the young girl and started distributing it widely, giving a face to the collateral damage of war.
Since then, the movement sparked by the simple portrait of a girl without an arm has given rise to the organization No More Victims. No More Victims is "a non profit, non-sectarian, humanist organization" working "to restore the health and well-being of victims of war and to advocate and educate for peace," according to its Web site. The founders of the organization, Miller and Pogue, worked to find the care Asraa' needed. After a visa finally arrived to allow Asraa' to come to the United States, they brought her to Shriners Hospital in Houston, Texas in 2004 where she received a prosthetic arm. Anne Cothran, the National Community Coordinator for No More Victims reported that Asraa' is currently doing well in her home of Abu Floos and believes that she is graduating from high school this year.
But Asraa' is not the only Iraqi citizen who has been denied medical attention.
"According to many reports, Iraq had the best medical centers in all the Middle East, and now the medical system has almost entirely been destroyed," Miller said in a phone interview. "The country has been torn to pieces."