Three-year-old Amina is back home in Iraq after spending more than two months at the Miller School of Medicine undergoing a cochlear implant, followed by intensive therapy to improve her hearing skills. She came to the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Medical Center at the end of last summer to receive the device thanks to the efforts of a physician from the U.S. Army Special Forces based in Baghdad. Colonel Warner Anderson’s wife once worked with Thomas Balkany, M.D., professor and chair of the Department of Otolaryngology; she knew about his exceptional cochlear implant program, and the couple reached out to him.

“The real hero of this story is Colonel Anderson and his colleagues in the Army Special Forces; without their persistence this child would have been destined to a lifetime of silence,” says Balkany. “She was born deaf and had no chance for language development or education in Iraq without this device. It will now allow her to hear and grow up much like any other child.”

The International Kids Fund, a philanthropic program of the Jackson Memorial Foundation, helped pay for the medical care, while Advanced Bionics donated the cochlear implant.

Balkany successfully placed the implant in Amina’s right ear during surgery at Holtz Children’s Hospital, two weeks later the device was turned on, and for the first time the child with the shiny brown eyes could hear sounds. The first word her father said to her was “baba,” which is Arabic for daddy.

After the initial activation, more than a month of intensive therapy followed. “She is able to hear everything, but we have to teach her to learn to sort out the sounds and make sense of them,” says Annelle Hodges, Ph.D., chief of audiology. “It’s like starting all over with a baby.”

By the time she was ready to return home, Amina was dancing to the music of a portable boom box she received as a gift during a surprise birthday party put on by the staff in the Department of Otolaryngology. A happy reunion with her mother in Baghdad followed days later, and her many relatives are said to be extremely impressed with the sounds she is already able to hear.