A delicate ophthalmological surgery to help a young Kurdish woman, Noora, who arrived in Italy thanks to a solidarity chain that started from Dohuk, a territory of Kurdistan in Northern Iraq, and reached the Federico II University Hospital in Naples.
Noora, affected by a tumor defined as "lymphoproliferative" that had affected her ocular adnexa, that is, the structures that protect the eyeball, and the orbit, was operated on by the team of Professor Diego Strianese, head of the Simple Operating Unit of Ocular Adnexa Pathology/Oculoplasty, belonging to the Complex Operating Unit of Ophthalmology directed by Professor Ciro Costagliola.
The association “Iniziative di Solidarietà OdV SIENA”, chaired by Iole Pinto, with the fundamental support of the Campania Region and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, activated the chain of solidarity that allowed the young woman to be operated on at the centre of excellence of the AOU Federico II in Naples.
“When we received the request to take on this case,” explains Strianese, “we immediately took action to offer our full availability. Noora needed the removal of a mass involving the ocular adnexa, a possible and worrying worsening of a previous tumor.
Naples Kurdish girl saved: Professor Strianese explains the intervention
A type of intervention performed by very few centers in Italy and Europe. The center for ocular adnexa diseases of the AOU Federico II has been a national point of reference for this type of ocular pathology for about 30 years, a skill that is renewed with determination and enthusiasm from generation to generation.
In fact, thanks also to the contribution of doctors Adriana Iuliano, Vittoria Lanni and Mariapaola Laezza, and of the valid specialists in training, it was possible to successfully treat Noora”.
A story, that of Noora, of great suffering and fear, but also of solidarity and international commitment. The girl, now 27 years old, in 1991 had lived the drama of the exodus of her people from Iraq to Turkey and Iran. An escape from chemical bombs and the massacres of Saddam Hussein's militias.
She was then almost ten years old, and in those years she found herself facing her oncological problems, even in that case impossible to cure in her country. Nora was transferred to Italy, thanks to the humanitarian projects of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs underway in those years in Iraq and, therefore, operated and treated. In recent months, a new diagnosis of cancer.
Hence the need to find a facility with the skills and technologies needed to save her. “The family – says President Pinto – asked us for help again for Noora. We therefore undertook a search for possible healthcare facilities in Italy that could treat her, and from Siena, where our association is based, we were advised of the ophthalmology of Federico II in Naples, recognized as an international excellence for the treatment of this type of pathology”.
“I would like to thank the general director Giuseppe Longo, who was fundamental in addressing and resolving the complex procedures that characterize the transfer of patients at an international level, Dr. Paola Magri of the general management staff and Professor Luigi Califano, director of the department,” concludes Professor Costagliola.
In the next few days Noora will undergo a check-up and then she will be able to return home together with her mother who accompanied her on her long journey.
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