“To help him learn to walk with his new legs”
“Bakir was playing football with Rayyan and other friends when a missile hit them. Some of them are now paralysed, my son had both his legs amputated because of the injuries he received”. As his dad tells me this story, Bakir bursts into tears: maybe it’s because he knows he can no longer play football with his friends, maybe because the memory of what happened is still too fresh, too painful.
I met him at the Sulaymaniyah Rehabilitation and Reintegration Centre: here we have built and applied his prostheses, and he’s now following a rehabilitation program. Some days ago, in front of his proud father, he managed to walk for the first time without leaning on supporting bars.
We will continue to assist him in the coming years as well: Bakir’s prostheses will need to adapt to his growth, to be changed, replaced. It will always be free, for him and for his family.
In the end, I think this is one of the reasons why we work in Iraq: to try to guarantee a future for boys like Bakir who, because of the war, were in danger of not having one. To help him learn to walk with his new legs and maybe, one day, see him playing football again.
— Antonio, Grant Manager in Iraq