'Uncle George - he is a good person. He is the one who saved my daughter'

In the houseof Mariam Hamza, George Galloway is considered something approaching a god. There are photographs of him on the walls, there are posters of his famous sanction-busting bus trip from Big Ben to Baghdad and only good words are spoken about "Uncle George".

"He is a good person. I cannot describe him in mere words. He is the one who saved my daughter," said Mariam's mother, Karima, dismissing reports that the Labour MP took money from the Iraqi regime with a shake of her head. "She was dying, she was like a skeleton and then God sent Mr Galloway from nowhere."

Mariam is now eight, a sweet-faced, curly-haired girl with a large smile. Four years ago, when she was suffering from leukemia, Mr Galloway selected her from a number of other, similarly inflicted children and decided he would provide the treatment that would save her life.

She rapidly became the focus of a huge campaign that highlighted the pernicious and deadly effect of UN sanctions on Iraq – in particular on the thousands of children who were dying every year because of a lack of medical care and proper drugs. Mariam was flown to Britain where she underwent treatment that did indeed save her life.

But the treatment was not an entire success.

Soon after the little girl returned to Baghdad she lost her eyesight – she is currently learning Braille at school – and while the doctors she visits in Jordan every six months for blood tests are happy with her progress, she has not been given an all clear.

"Mr Galloway is like a father to me, a friend. He is the finest human being on earth, not just in my view but for all the people of Iraq," said Mariam's father, Hamza Abid, a labourer "He took her dead body from Iraq and brought her back alive and kicking from England."

There was a time when Mr Galloway would visit the family every time he visited Iraq, staying for meals and bringing money and drugs for Mariam. But the family have not heard from the MP for more than six months. The medicine he has been sending directly to their home will run out in a month and the rent that he pays for their house has already gone. The people from whom they rent the small, neat house in the Khadra suburb are already threatening to throw them out.

"We are disappointed that we have not heard from him," said the little girl's father, as she sat next to him on a sofa in their front room. "If he has forgotten us, we are all dead."

Mariam's parents say they do not know why Mr Galloway chose to help just their daughter rather than any of the numerous other children in Iraq suffering from cancer, saying they believe it was simply the will of God. It is a question that has also troubled Mariam's doctors who first treated her when she was two years old.

Dr Marouj al-Anni, a leukemia specialist at the busy Saddam Central Hospital, said she remembered when Mariam was selected by Mr Galloway's people. "A press person came and took lots of pictures," she said. "We did not know why they took Mariam. Perhaps she looked more malnourished. There were more critical cases. She did not even really need the treatment at the time."

The other children that Dr Anni has treated over the years have not been so fortunate. Since sanctions were imposed in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, cancer treatment in Iraq has been carried out without the most basic of chemotherapy drugs. There is only one radiotherapy unit in the country and that is always full of patients. As a result, fewer than 15 per cent of the child cancer patients live.

"There is no treatment, there are no drugs. We just watch the children crying from the bleeding, from their pain. We leave them to their destiny," said the doctor. "In my opinion the money that was spent for that girl could have been better spent on the whole department and other patients."

Despite the questions raised by some about the way their daughter was used by Mr Galloway and the allegations over payments from Saddam Hussein, Mariam's parents continue to defend him.

"He is a very nice person," said her father. "Even if he did take some money from the Iraqi government it was for Mariam. He is paying for her drugs and her rent. He is a good man." Mariam, who has three sisters and a brother, added: "George – he is a very nice person."