Girl In Vietnam Napalm Photo Has Laser Treatment
Kim Phuc suffers daily pain from the scar tissue left after she was badly burned during an accidental napalm strike in 1972.
Monday 26 October 2015 13:02, UK
A woman who suffered horrific burns when she was hit by an errant napalm strike during the Vietnam War has travelled to the US to undergo a series of laser treatments to relieve her pain.
Kim Phuc became a living symbol of the conflict after she was captured in a 1972 photograph running naked and screaming towards the camera with her arms outstretched after she was burned.
More than 40 years later she has deep aches and pain from the scarring which stretches from her left hand up her arm, up her neck to her hairline and down most of her back.
Mrs Phuc, now 52, has begun a series of laser treatments at the Miami Dermatology and Laser Institute, which doctors hope will smooth and soften the scar tissue and relieve her pain.
She said: "So many years I thought that I have no more scars, no more pain when I'm in heaven.
"But now - heaven on earth for me!"
Photojournalist Nick Ut took the iconic photograph of the then nine-year-old on 8 June, 1972, after the South Vietnamese military accidentally dropped napalm on civilians in the village of Trang Bang, outside Saigon.
He described the girl screaming in Vietnamese "too hot! too hot!" as her burnt skin was peeling off her body.
Napalm sticks to the skin like a jelly, so there was no way for victims including Mrs Phuc to outrun the heat.
Jill Waibel, a doctor at the Miami Dermatology and Laser Institute, said: "The fire was stuck on her for a very long time."
She added that Mrs Phuc suffered serious burns over a third of her body, which destroyed her skin down through the layer of collagen leaving her with scars almost four times as thick as normal skin.
The treatment, which costs up to $2,000, has been offered free by Ms Waibel after Mrs Phuc contacted her for a consultation.
The lasers heat the skin to boiling point to vaporise scar tissues after sedatives have been administered and numbing cream spread over the skin.
Mrs Phuc is expected to need up to seven treatments over the next nine months.
Mrs Phuc defected to Canada in the early 1990s with her husband Bui Huy Toan. Her pain is especially bad when the seasons change in the country, triggered by scarred nerve endings which misfire at random.
The couple live outside Toronto and have two sons, aged 21 and 18.
Mr Ut won the Pulitzer Prize for the image of Mrs Phuc.