Welcome
You are invited to the 5th Rebuilding Iraq Conference in Washington, DC on December 1-2, 2005, to explore public health and public safety solutions to benefit the people of Iraq and help promote a more stable environment for long-term partnerships within Iraq.
The conference will be the first in the Rebuilding Iraq series since its inception in 2003 to focus on health and safety issues such as physical rehabilitation, public outreach, medical training, telemedicine, healthcare information systems, occupational safety, and a broad range of personal safety topics.
The 2-day event is open to all interested businesses and organizations from all countries. If you are interested in making presentations related to healthcare or safety, please contact John Simmons, Chief Technology Officer, SafetyIssues.com, at 703-992-6689 or by email at johnsimmons@safetyissues.org.
Dr. Joseph Agris
Program Chair
Public Safety and Health in the New Iraq
The 5th Rebuilding Iraq Conference
December 1-2, 2005
Washington, DC
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
May 25, 2004 - 10:02 A.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: I'm honored to shake the hand of a brave Iraqi citizen
who had his hand cut off by Saddam Hussein. I'm with six other Iraqi
citizens, as well, who suffered the same fate. They are examples of the
brutality of the tyrant.
I am also here with Marvin Zindler, of Houston, Texas. I appreciate Joe Agris,
the doctor who helped put these hands on these men; Don North, the
documentary producer who made a film of this brutality, which brought the
plight of these gentlemen to the attention of Marvin and his foundation.
These men had hands restored because of the generosity and love of an
American citizen. And I am so proud to welcome them to the Oval Office.
Overview
Public Safety and Health in the New Iraq is an international network gathering latest technologies and knowledge in the areas of healthcare and community safety to help Iraq.
We are committed to serving the people of Iraq by promoting among them a culture of medicine that teaches compassionate care, supports healthy living and encourages medical leadership. We are also committed to promoting a culture of safety throughout Iraq in order to greatly reduce accidental personal injury and property damage at home and in the workplace.
With your support, Public Safety and Health in the New Iraq and its partners are:
- Rehabilitating Iraqi amputees with state-of-the-art bionic arms and legs (see U.S. Department of State article below);
- Saving the lives of Iraqis in extreme need, performing complex surgery on children and adults;
- Bringing world-class medical care to more Iraqis by training Iraqi physicians in new surgical procedures;
- Introducing occupational safety measures and sharing best practices;
- Demonstrating effective safety products that prevent personal injury and property damage;
- Increasing the number of healthy babies born in Iraq and improving their chances of survival;
- Delivering urgently needed medications and medical supplies to overcrowded hospitals and clinics;
- Strengthening Iraqi communities through family health and safety tours, special exhibitions and media outreach;
- Accelerating a national healing process in Iraq by promoting the use of healthcare information and safety monitoring systems;
- Treating the physical, mental and psychosocial devastation of Iraqi victims of the former regime, through torture rehabilitation and post-genocide recovery programs;
- Giving families in dangerous and remote parts of Iraq access to doctors around the world through telemedicine and mobile clinics;
- Lowering healthcare costs to Iraqis by supporting local medical manufacturing;
- Creating partnerships between the international and Iraqi medical and safety communities through broadband video teleconferencing;
- Encouraging medical and safety leadership by establishing centers of excellence connected to researchers worldwide.
The steady decline of healthcare during the reign of Saddam Hussein has caused the life expectancy of the Iraqi citizen to drop by 7 years. Our goal is to raise the life expectancy of the Iraqi population by 7 years within one generation.
Public Safety and Health in the New Iraq
The 5th Rebuilding Iraq Conference
December 1-2, 2005
Washington, DC
Joseph Agris, M.D., Chief Medical Officer
josephagris@iraqassociation.org
John Simmons, Chief Technology Officer
johnsimmons@safetyissues.org
(703) 992-6689
 Public Safety and Health in the New Iraq is supported by SafetyIssues.com, a Boston-based safety information technology and multimedia production company, and by the Agris-Zindler
Children's Fund, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization in Houston, Texas. Since 1981,
the Children's Fund has delivered badly needed care to children in some of the
poorest areas around the world, including Central America, the Middle East,
the former Soviet bloc, China and many other places. The Children's Fund has
also helped many children and their families in the United States. This
commitment to bringing about solutions to benefit forgotten children is a
driving force behind the Public Safety and Health in the New Iraq program. As of April, 2003, the
entire youth population of Iraq was born during the dictatorship of Saddam
Hussein, hence they are all victims of the former regime.
In pursuing our objectives we are grateful for the
initial assistance of The White House, the Iraq Project and Contracting
Office, the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services, and the Embassy of Iraq in facilitating the
relationships necessary for communication, coordination and collaboration
with the Iraqi Ministry of Justice and Ministry of Health, and other contacts in
Iraq.
RET IRELAND (IRISH TV)
President Bush interviewed by Carole Coleman (excerpt)
June 25, 2004
THE PRESIDENT: People don't like war. But what they should be angry
about is the fact that there was a brutal dictator there that had destroyed
lives and put them in mass graves and had torture rooms.
Listen, I wish they could see the seven men who came to see me in the Oval
Office. They had their right hands cut off by Saddam Hussein because the
currency had devalued when he was the leader. See?
And guess what happened? Americans saw the fact that they had their hands
cut off and crosses -- or "x"s carved in their forehead. And they flew them to
America and they came to my office with a new hand, grateful for the
generosity of America and with Saddam Hussein's brutality in their mind.
Iraqis Dismembered by Saddam Received Artificial Limbs
in U.S.
Artificial hand recipients thank U.S. for liberation of Iraq
By Phyllis McIntosh
Washington File Special Correspondent
U.S. Department of State
Washington, DC -- Iraqi journalist Basim Al Fadhly can't wait to return
home and walk down the street holding his daughter with one hand and his
son with the other.
Until a week ago, that was impossible. Al Fadhly is one of nine Iraqi men
whose right hands were amputated in 1995 on orders of Saddam Hussein as
punishment for their alleged crime of dealing in American dollars.
Thanks to remarkable cooperation and generosity of U.S. government
agencies, private industry, doctors, hospitals, and individual Americans,
seven of the nine were brought to the United States and fitted free of charge
with state-of-the art prosthetic hands.
After only a few days of practice, the men were able to write, throw a ball,
shake hands, raise a glass, tie their neckties, and put on their shoes. When
speaking, they gesture naturally. Some proudly adorn their new hands with
rings and watches.
On May 25, just one week after being fitted with the devices, the men were
invited to the White House, where President Bush shook each of their new
hands and said he was "so proud" to welcome them to the Oval Office. The
President assured the men that "we have a plan to help Iraq achieve free
elections, we'll transfer full sovereignty, we'll continue to help with
reconstruction, and I will continue to ask the world to help."
The President's pledge to stay the course in Iraq "gives me hope of having
closer the day when we get rid of all these injustices," said Ala'a Hassan. "I
think we are in a period when all nations and all peoples have to come
together to build a society and a world where there is peace."
At a Washington press conference, the men expressed their unwavering
gratitude to the American government and the American people for liberating
their homeland from Saddam's tyranny.
"The Iraqi people and the American people are brothers in humanity," said
Salah Znad, a teacher. "We appreciate that you paid a price to help the
Iraqis out of these problems and injustice. We are thankful to the American
people."
During their visit to Washington, which was organized by the American
Foreign Policy Council, the men had an opportunity to meet with Secretary
of State Colin Powell May 27. The Iraqis also met with other government
officials and, at their request, with American soldiers at Walter Reed Army
Hospital who were injured in Iraq.
The U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural
Affairs provided program support and language interpretation for the men's
visit to Washington.
Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs Patricia S.
Harrison said, "The Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs has initiated
and supported many successful programs involving Iraqi men, women, and
youth. As one of the Iraqi Fulbrighters said, 'The American people have
opened the gates to my future. I will return to Iraq and help build the perfect
society.'"
Reflecting on her meeting with the Iraqi amputees in Washington, Harrison
added, "These brave men had a chance to meet with American
entrepreneurs and discuss ways to work together after they return home.
One by one as they related their harrowing story, they expressed gratitude to
the American people for their generosity. Salah Znad said, 'You have not only
restored our hands, you have restored our hearts.'"
The seven Iraqis, all in their 30s and 40s, include a salesman who once
enjoyed playing tennis; a jeweler who was arrested after wiretaps revealed
that he called his bank each day to check on the price of gold; a former
textile importer who hopes to study in the United States one day; an
economist turned journalist who works as a reporter/producer for Al-Iraqya
TV; a currency exchanger who proudly admits to trading foreign currency in
1995 and has since founded a group to help Iraqis discover what happened
to relatives under the Saddam regime; a teacher who purposely and
repeatedly failed college exams in the 1980s to avoid serving in Saddam's
army; and a businessman who after his release from prison escaped from
Iraq and was granted asylum in Holland, where he still lives with his family.
The men were arrested in 1994, then sent to the now infamous Abu Ghraib
prison, where after a 30-minute trial and a year's imprisonment they were
sentenced to have their right hands amputated. Hassan Al Gearawy, today
a Dutch citizen, asked the surgeons to take his left hand, crippled by an
injury received during the Iran-Iraq war, and spare his right. His plea was
ignored.
As a last act with his right hand prior to the amputation, Nazaar Joudi wrote
to his wife, "Hopefully Allah will replace my hand with an even better one."
When he received the prosthetic hand, his first act was to write another letter
to his wife.
Not trusting that doctors would carry out his grisly orders, Saddam directed
prison officials to videotape the entire procedure and deliver the nine severed
hands to him. Besides amputating the hands, surgeons at Abu Ghraib
methodically tattooed an X on each man's forehand to mark him as a
criminal.
Basim Al Fadhly, who as a journalist has since interviewed one of the doctors
who was present at the amputations, said that "the doctors who committed
this crime - it was a crime, not an operation - have to be tried" and punished
by the new Iraqi government.
After their sentences were carried out, the men were released from prison.
Like Al Gearawy, another fled Iraq and today lives in Germany; he declined
the trip to Houston. The ninth, a Kurd, never recovered from the amputation
and died a few months later.
Branded as criminals both on their foreheads and on their citizen
identification cards, the six who remained in Iraq were treated as outcasts,
unable to find work, and trailed by the secret police. Often depressed and in
constant pain from unrepaired nerve endings in their damaged forearms, the
men banded together for support.
The story of their rehabilitation began a year ago in Baghdad, when Don
North, a television correspondent and producer, was shown a copy of
Saddam's amputation video, and he set out to find the nine amputees. He
decided to make a documentary about the men's ordeal. The 55-minute film,
"Remembering Saddam" was shown for the first time in the Arab world this
week on the U.S. government-sponsored TV station Al Hurra.
The chain of events that brought the men to the United States started when
an oil engineer from Houston overheard North talking about them in a
Baghdad caf?. The Texan suggested that North contact Houston TV newsman
Marvin Zindler, who in turn called Dr. Joe Agris, a plastic and
reconstructive surgeon. After seeing the video of the amputations, Agris and
fellow surgeon Fred Kestler agreed to operate free of charge.
In short order, Paul Bremer, Coalition Provisional Authority administrator in
Baghdad, the Defense Department, and the Department of Homeland
Security cleared the way for the men to come to the United States.
Houston-based Continental Airlines flew the men from Germany to Texas.
Several donors provided hotel rooms, and private citizens offered to house
the men, cook for them and wash their clothes.
Houston Methodist Hospital and the Texas Institute for Rehabilitation
and Research provided free care. Otto Bock Health Care donated its
top-of-the-line prosthetic hands, which were fitted by Dynamic Orthotics
and Prosthetics in Houston.
"I was amazed at how many Americans want to reach out and help Iraqis if
only they have the opportunity," North said. "We didn't have to ask twice."
The Houston surgeons removed the hated tattoos from the men's foreheads,
repaired nerves in their forearms to eliminate pain, and created proper
surfaces on which to attach the prosthetic hands.
When the Iraqis first arrived, they were quiet and somber, Agris recalled.
"They didn't smile, no matter what I said to make a joke. But after the
surgeries and when they finally got fitted, [the transformation] was
unbelievable."
Agris added that he hopes to travel to Iraq to teach and perhaps eventually
open a center to aid some of the estimated one million amputees left in
Saddam's wake.
Asked at a Washington press conference about prisoner abuses by American
soldiers at Abu Ghraib, site of their own torture and punishment, the men
were philosophical. "We see now the abusers will be tried, and they will face
punishment," said Ala'a Hassan. "Secondly, there has been a formal apology
to the people of Iraq. And third, I believe there are mistakes everywhere in
every country."
The men said they welcome President Bush's decision to demolish Abu
Ghraib. "In this prison many innocent people were killed, and many people
suffered," Nazaar Joudi said. "Children were tortured, women were tortured,
elderly were tortured. The decision to destroy Abu Ghraib is going to turn the
page of suffering and injustice. We want to forget this period and turn to a
new page of democracy and freedom."
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