AT THE age of three, Shams Kareem has endured more suffering than most people have to put up with in a lifetime.

She was blinded as a baby by a car bomb which killed her mother as they drove through a Baghdad market. She spent three months in hospital but emerged disfigured; and despite impassioned pleas from her father, she has yet to receive the treatment she needs for her injuries in a city deserted by many of its doctors.

When I visited the family home last week, Shams was sitting alone in the middle of the living room floor, rocking back and forth with her arms clasped tightly around herself, as if for comfort. But at the sound of a visitor arriving, she stood up excitedly and fumbled along the wall with her arms stretched out in front of her.

"Carry, carry," she called, until I lifted her up. Then she nuzzled my neck and wrapped her arms around me as if clinging on to life itself.

Two years after the explosion that ripped her from her mother’s lap, tore away her chance of an education and wrecked any prospects of a career and marriage, Shams is in constant need of a cuddle. She is afraid to be alone and is so terrified of loud bangs that she becomes hysterical at the sound of them, sometimes biting her own tongue.

"My blind angel is growing up with no future," said her father Hisham Fadel Kareem, 32, his brow already wrinkled by anxiety.

Shams - Arabic for "sun" - is by no means the only one. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund, the number of children disabled by the Iraq war, which began in 2003, had reached 8,346 at the last count.

Of these, 3,190, like Shams, are aged four or under.

There are too few people to treat them because nearly two-thirds of Iraq’s doctors have fled the country - some after witnessing violence, others after finding their families and themselves targeted by killers and kidnappers.

Last Thursday, however, I took Shams to meet Professor Omar al-Yaqubi, an eye specialist who has recently returned to Baghdad from London.

Shams has no left eye and the professor found no sign that she could detect any light with her right. He concluded that she needed surgery to her eyes and her face, rehabilitation and psychological support, "all of which are unfortunately not available in Iraq".

His report was sent to the internationally renowned Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, where Professor Peng T Khaw had expressed an interest in seeing Shams.

"I am so sad to hear about this little girl," he wrote, explaining that scans and electrical tests would be needed before any decision was made about what could be done.

Estimates of the cost of treating Shams in British hospitals range from £15,000 to £50,000, however - far beyond the means of her father, a lorry driver with two small sons to support and no job, who is in desperate need of a benefactor.

Kareem and his wife Wafa, who met while they both worked at Iraq’s ministry of industry, were returning home from a visit to her mother’s on the afternoon of November 23, 2006, when they were caught up in one of Al-Qaeda’s deadliest multiple bomb attacks. Wafa was cradling Shams in the back of their vehicle.

"I heard the first explosion, followed by the second and the third. The police diverted all traffic through Al-Hay market because the other routes were disrupted but the fourth car bomb was waiting for us there," Kareem said. "We were all blown out of the car.

"Wafa was on fire and I saw Shams had landed next to her. I starting putting out the flames on Wafa’s body with my hands but she was already dead.

"Shams was lying face down on asphalt which was burning from the ferocity of the explosion. I turned her over. There was blood covering her entire face."

An ambulance took her away while Kareem looked for his sons Ghaith, who was five at the time, and Taif, three. But they had been flung further away and he could not find them. He telephoned his father Fadel, a retired teacher, and, with other family members, searched the hospitals amid scenes of carnage and chaos: 202 people had been killed and hundreds more injured.

Not until that evening were the boys located. Ghaith had shrapnel lodged in his back, where it remains to this day, but Taif had escaped with bruises. "I found Wafa in the morgue of the Imam Ali hospital but we couldn’t find Shams," Kareem said.

It was 24 hours before Kareem’s father rang him with the news that his baby girl was in the Shaheed Adnan hospital, that she was on a ventilator because her lungs had filled with toxic smoke from the asphalt, that her left eye had been removed and her right eye severely damaged; she was blind.

Kareem broke down at the recollection that, seconds before the bombs went off, his wife had been telling him that Shams would grow up to be a clever student.

When Shams returned 12 weeks later to the house her immediate family shares with her grandfather and great-aunt, her brother Taif was afraid of the way she looked. But the older Ghaith now says he will take care of her forever.

"They don’t ask about their mother any more and I don’t talk to them about what happened," Kareem said.

No father could have fought harder for care. Kareem has begged officials at the ministry of health and the office of Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, to fund treatment in Europe and has appealed to President Jalal Talabani, but in vain.

The only help so far came in 2007 in neighbouring Jordan, where the non-governmental organisation, Médecins Sans Frontières, has treated 600 Iraqi wounded, including Shams.

"They did some plastic surgery for her scalp but couldn’t treat her eyes," Kareem said. "I was told she’d need treatment in Europe."

For now, swift treatment seems a remote possibility for most Iraqis. An estimated 2,200 doctors and nurses have died in the violence and more than 250 have been kidnapped. The International Committee of the Red Cross said last year that at least 20,000 of the country’s 34,000 registered doctors had left.

The impact on Shams is more than physical. She has a limited vocabulary for a three-year-old and although she will soon be of school age, Iraq has no schools for blind children.

When I asked Kareem whether she could learn Braille, he was amazed by the question.

"In Iraq? We haven’t progressed so far yet," he replied. He is acutely aware of the stigma attached to disability in their country. Other children are wary of Shams now and in later life she will be seen as a burden by any prospective suitor.

"Her future has been ruined. It’s all over for her. She won’t be able to have an education," he gulped as she suddenly sat on his lap and planted a kiss on his cheek. "When her brothers go to school every day, Shams remains behind all alone, waiting for one of us to take her hand for an outing or just for company.

"Her life has been turned into hell. What has she got to look forward to? Nothing but a life filled with darkness," he said. "I would give her my own eyes, if it was possible."

If you want to help Shams or another child like her, please send a cheque made out to Shams Fund to Foreign Desk, The Sunday Times, London E98 1ST. We will make sure your money is well spent