A Lifeline Abroad for Iraqi Children

Capt. Jonathan Heavey, a Walter Reed surgeon, center, and Capt. John Knight, a physician assistant, right, created Hope.MD while serving in Baghdad. (By Ernesto Londono -- The Washington Post)
Buy Photo

Their first case involved an 11-year-old boy who had been admitted to a U.S. military hospital in Baghdad after being wounded in an insurgent attack. He had sustained severe burns and lost large amounts of tissue. An infection required expensive antibiotics.

Heavey contacted a friend at the University of Cincinnati, who agreed to take the case and found a family willing to take care of the boy and his grandmother during the treatment. Things came together at the last minute, just as doctors at the military hospital in Baghdad were concluding that they had to discharge the boy.

"Telling us they had to kick him out," Heavey said.

Heavey and Knight purchased the airfare for the child and his grandmother, who left Baghdad in late April. They are still in Cincinnati, where the boy's treatment at Shriners Hospital for Children has gone well.

"We got one!" Heavey told Knight after the boy and his grandmother left Iraq. "Now it's time to open the gate."

Army lawyers told them they could raise money for the foundation as long as they didn't identify themselves as military officers. They hired an Indian company to create a Web site, Hope.MD. The Internal Revenue Service responded to their application for nonprofit status with a letter saying they would need to submit additional documents to demonstrate that the organization wouldn't support terrorists.

"We found that to be particularly entertaining," Heavey said.

The next few cases Heavey and Knight took on involved children who were legally blind. Esen Karamursel Akpek, an ophthalmologist from Turkey at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, agreed to volunteer her services. The children are being treated at a hospital in Istanbul free of charge.

With dozens of additional cases in the pipeline and the end of their deployment just a few months away, Heavey and Knight started thinking of ways to broaden the reach of their organization. Knight jokingly suggested that they raise money from defense contractors.

"The next thing I knew, Jon was actually doing it," Knight said.

Heavey hovered around the computer during the seven hours it took to download Securities and Exchange Commission financial reports on the top 10 defense contractors. Two weeks later, with all the documents in hand, he created a database that juxtaposed the companies' revenue and net income for 2002 and 2007. Lockheed Martin, for example, posted $26.58 billion in revenue in 2002 and $41.86 billion in 2007. Halliburton saw its revenue increase from $12.57 billion to $22.58 billion during the same period.

"You always have a hunch that there are people who make money off a war," Heavey said. "But you never really grasp the extent of it until you look at the figures. It's mind-blowing."

In October, Heavey sent letters to Lockheed Martin, Halliburton and eight other companies, detailing what he had learned about their revenue.

"Greetings from sunny Kadamiyah Baghdad!" Heavey wrote, telling them briefly about Hope.MD and the handful of children the organization had been able to help. "Using our own funding we have helped nearly a dozen children receive surgery for life-threatening and disabling conditions they suffered in violent attacks. According to the revenue and income metrics below, it appears to us that you have considerably greater resources to help more children."

Heavey asked the executives to match, dollar for dollar, any money that Hope.MD is able to raise online.

He said none has replied.