Michigan Physician Assistant Helps Burned Iraqi Boy
Michigan Army National Guard physician assistant David Howell helped bring a 12-year-old Iraqi boy to the United States for medical treatment. Howell and the boy arrived in Michigan this week.
Mohammed, a thin and quiet youngster from the Iraqi city of Ramadi, suffered burns over 30 percent of his body in a house fire when he was a baby. He retains the scars. People close to him say those marks condemn him to be a social outcast.
"He would not be able to marry or have a family," said Maj. David Howell, a Michigan Army National Guard physician's assistant.
Howell first noticed Mohammed in November. A group of women and children passed by where he was posted, and Mohammed was the only one who looked at him.
Later Howell learned that the boy's father had served as a translator for the U.S. Marines and was killed for it, and in Mohammed's broken English, the boy asked Howell to help him.
"I owed it to the family," Howell said, speaking of the boy's mother, who was jobless and struggling to care for six children. "I personally wanted to do everything I could to help the family."
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