Farah, meaning "happiness," was abandoned at a Baghdad hospital in 2010.
She is one of many Iraqi children to have been born with deformities and disease following the US-led invasion.
Residents say the use of depleted uranium weapons in the conflict has caused staggering rates of illness and disease, affecting countless families.
In 2010, SBS Dateline reporter Fouad Hady travelled to Iraq where he met some of the affected children, including Farah.
Hospital staff had isolated her from other children because she was suffering severe infection and was close to death.
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This year, he returned to Iraq and to the hospital where Farah had been abandoned.
Doctor Nadaa told him the last time she had seen the tiny girl was more than a year before, when she had left hospital.
But Fouad was able to find out that Farah is now a ward of the state and living in a government orphanage.
When he was granted access to her, he found Farah still suffering difficulties breathing and swallowing due to her deformities.
She was in desperate need of further operations to save her eyesight, but had been blocked from leaving Iraq because she could not access a passport as her parentage is unknown.
This red tape from Baghdad’s Health Department has left her carers frustrated and the little girl in limbo.
To hear more about Farah’s story, watch the full Dateline report in the video player above.
Dateline airs on Tuesdays at 9.30 on SBS ONE.
