FORWARD OPERATING BASE SPEICHER, TIKRIT, Iraq— Helping Iraq one friend at a time. This isn’t so much a vocal pledge that Maj. Patrick D. Byer, a staff officer with the 264th Engineer Group, has made but an undertaking that he and many around him have upheld. Obviously many projects that are funded like water treatment plants, rebuilding schools and clinics affect a wider range of people, but often helping one person can win the heart and minds of a family or even a community.

  Tariq Ziyad is one of many children throughout the world that are born with a condition called spina bifida. Essentially the condition is congenital meaning that at birth Tariq was born with an open lesion on his back along the spinal cord. It is not uncommon for a host of other problems to develop or coincide with the defect.

  Eleven month old Tariq is the son of a contractor whom Byer uses for various Commanders Emergency Relief Program projects. Byer had heard about Tariq’s problems and had arranged for a Physician’s Assistant (PA) to evaluate him and also visit the local clinic to associate with his doctor and help the clinic with any medication it needed.

  Tariq has had some surgery already done, said 2nd Lt. Christopher V. Vanucci, 216th Engineer Battalion PA. The opening that occurs in the spine was repaired several weeks after birth, but now developed a myelomenigocele, cyst.

  The hydrocephalus, basically water in the brain, was drained by inserting a shunt, a long tube on the scalp that runs internally from the level of the neck all the way to the level of the belly button. He also initially had inguinal hernia twice both of which he has had repaired here in country, said Vanucci. 

  “Tariq has a complete loss of sensation in his extremities on the left side and then on the opposite side he maintains full sensation but has contracture at the ankle,” Vanucci said. The foot is cocked up at an awkward angle and when pushed it down it springs back up. Unable to feel his leg on one side and with contracture on the other, Tariq is also plagued with hip displasia which has resulted in a bowing of the femur.

  “Certainly children crawl at that age, but he can’t feel his leg so he pretty much does the moonwalk, all upper body movement,” Vanucci said.

  “We kinda talked and thought maybe there was something we could do for this baby,” said Byer.

  From that point Byer talked to the Division Surgeon to get guidance. Now with a trail to follow Byer’s first step was taking Tariq to see a U.S. Army pediatrician.

  “We got more contact names in Baghdad because we had to get permission from the Ministry of Health, which we did in the Salah Ad Din province, but then we had to go down to Baghdad, to get their permission,” Byer said.

  With help from Vanucci, Spc. Cassidy S. Phillips, a Soldier with the 264th Engineer Group, and others Tariq and his mother are arranged to be flown to the states and have a host family to stay with.

  “I just started contacting people,” said Phillips, a nursing student in her senior year at the University of Wisconsin. “I contacted Mercy Ships and Doctors without Boarders, and Mercy Ships emailed me back.” Mercy Ships committed to providing the air fare to fly the child from Jordan to Denver, Colo.

  “My predecessor, who was with me here before from the 244th did a lot of humanitarian stuff, so when he left it was kind of my vow to make sure that I carried it on,” said Vanucci.

  With this mindset Capt. Craig Robinson, the 244th Engineer Battalion’s PA, has become a point of contact in Denver, Colo. where a children’s hospital volunteered to accept and treat Tariq. Robinson has done a lot of footwork to arrange the hospital and make sure that all the surgical teams have all the pictures and everything else, Vanucci said.

  Robinson also volunteered to house Tariq and his mother and even have a translator available during their stay in the United States.

  So what are the doctors going to do with Tariq?

  “There has been a little bit of question about that, and there’s going to continue to be a question about that until he gets back and seen by both a pediatric orthopedist as well as neurology,” said Vanucci. It is a meshing of two different teams that will to try and take this on.

  Some level of casting for the hip displasia and correction of the contracture in the foot will be done. “Now what can be done or not done about the myelomenigocele and not being able to feel down the entire leg is still in question,” said Vanucci. “That’s all neurology.”

  The neurologists may try to take a graft of the nerve and transplanting it and trying to regenerate that nerve pattern for it to function down the level of Tariq’s leg. “This would basically restore sensation and if that were to happen you would have movement and certainly an increased level for him to ambulate or walk, said Vanucci.

 Another problem for Tariq is that as he grows the shunt, tube that drains water from the brain, will become too short and have to be replaced. Currently in the United States shunt placement is done using a tube that will elongate making the procedure less frequent.

  “Some people need assisted walking canes over a period of time; certainly it would be beyond our wildest expectations if Tariq, considering his situation, was able to walk completely on his own without having assistance,” Vanucci said.

  “We’ve probably done something positive in the fact that we got him in contact with the doctors down in Baghdad that can help him. So it’s not definite that we’re going to evac him at this point,” Byer said. “I think it’s something were going to finish. It’s really based on this Ministry of Health. Right now, we’re at the point that if the child were to be treated in Iraq that treatment could start before we leave.”

  Through a translator, Tariq’s father, Ziyad Ibraheem said that, he couldn’t describe his happiness with words, that he owes the Americans forever and that he thinks that God sent Maj. Byer to him in order to save this baby.

  “If it doesn’t happen it’s okay because you did what you could do,” said Ibraheem.