Baby saved by Arabs, Jews and Christians

Gauracandra · February 26, 2002

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February 25, 2002 Posted: 8:03 PM EST (0103 GMT)

10-month-old Salaam is alive because of the efforts of Palestinian doctors, Christian nuns, and an Israeli surgeon.

JERUSALEM (AP) -- A Palestinian baby found abandoned at birth in a roadside heap of trash was rescued by Palestinian doctors, fed and strengthened by a group of nuns and its tiny heart repaired by an Israeli surgeon.

The survival of tiny Salaam, whose name means "peace" in Arabic, has become a rare tale of the region's usually fractured and clashing peoples working together to save a life.

The area has been torn by 17 months of Palestinian-Israeli violence in which children and babies on both sides have suffered and died.

Salaam, a 10-month-old baby with a pink clip in her dark hair, was released Jerusalem's Hadassah Hospital on Monday. She was first found by Palestinians along a road north of the West Bank town of Ramallah and taken to a shelter run by Palestinian social services in the town of Tulkarem. A group of nuns in Bethlehem gave her a permanent home.

Milgalter, shown kissing Salaam goodbye before she left the hospital, did not accept payment for performing the surgery.

But the baby's health worsened. She was born with a large hole between her heart's two ventricles, or chambers, and her lungs were not receiving enough blood. Palestinian doctors noticed she was turning blue and losing weight, and the baby was taken to a Jerusalem hospital.

"She was bone and skin and that's it," said Israeli doctor Eli Milgalter, who did the surgery to repair Salaam's heart on January 24. The nuns raised nearly $11,000 to pay for the hospital costs, and Milgalter performed the surgery without accepting payment.

Salaam has made a full recovery, doctors said.

It is special, he said, that even with violence raging and divides widening, Salaam was saved by Palestinians, Christians and Israelis. Yet, its rarity makes it bittersweet.

"She wouldn't have survived without this. Everybody had his share," he said. "It shows that there are good people on both sides of the fence -- and they don't rule anymore."

[This message has been edited by Gauracandra (edited 02-26-2002).]