Doctors in Israel were able to save the life of a little Syrian child suffering from critical head injuries after she was transported across the border in a humanitarian effort.
The six-year-old girl was shot in the head during fighting in Syria while playing in her family's yard. She was first treated in a local hospital and had emergency surgery there, but her condition remained severe and she had lost the ability to speak and suffered paralysis in the left side of her body.
The child, accompanied by her grandmother, was taken across the border in a serious neurological condition, under the care of IDF soldiers, to receive treatment at the Ziv Medical Center in Safed. The hospital had treated wounded Syrian patients during the Syrian civil war.
"The doctors cared for her as if she were one of their own," the child's grandmother said. "If we had been refused treatment in Israel, she would not have survived," she said.
The grandmother, who said she too had been treated at Ziv said that the doctors in Syria did not believe the child could survive her surgery and when her condition continued to deteriorate, there was no option but to bring her to Israel.
"We received a child in serious condition and understood we were in a fight for her life," Chief of Neurosurgery at Ziv, Dr. Samuel Tobias, said. "We saw a little girl with a severe head injury but knew we would not give up on her."
After treatment, the child's condition improved. "At some point, she started making sounds, then words followed, movements and most importantly, facial expressions. Not only did her body gain strength, but her mental condition also improved significantly and that was inspiring," he said.
"When she came here, she could not speak or move and today she is smiling." The child will undergo another operation to implant a stent into her head to cover some of the missing skull and improve her movement as much as possible, Tobias explained.