Doctors honored for treating burned girl

A Palestinian girl's ability to scamper over to her mother brought smiles to everyone at a ceremony Tuesday at which Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano honored local doctors who he said saved her from a life of pain.

Nebal Hani al Shamali, 6, had suffered fourth-degree burns - some down to the bone - on her lower body from a boiling water accident at her home in Gaza 20 months ago. The girl and her mother, Ikram al Shamali, had gotten out on American humanitarian visas through Egypt less than a week before the riots began there last month, Mangano noted.

"Nebal's story is one of courage and strength . . . after she knocked over a tea kettle that poured scalding hot water over her body," Mangano said at a news conference in Mineola.

Nebal's journey began in 2009 with the Palestine Children's Relief Fund and Doctors Without Borders and ended this month at South Nassau Communities Hospital in Oceanside. Physicians Kaveh Alizadeh and Roger L. Simpson of the Long Island Plastic Surgical Group in Garden City performed an eight-hour operation on Nebal on Feb. 4, removing scars and grafting skin over the burned areas.

"We had promised her mother that we would not use skin from Nebal's upper body, so we harvested what good skin we could from her lower body for the graft," said Alizadeh, adding that her skin can now grow without the itching and pain that had been waking her up at night.

Carolyn Spector, executive director of Mission: Restore, whose Manhasset organization paid Nebal's medical expenses, praised several people, including the hospital's chief pediatric nurse, Lynn Bert, who oversaw Nebal's care for 10 days after the operation. "She was wonderful," Spector said of the nurse, who attended the news conference.

Rabbi Anchelle Perl of Congregation Beth Sholom Chabad of Mineola said: "These actions show praise and appreciation for the humanity in all of us."