NGO Inara offers lifeline for wounded refugee children

Gulf News

NGO Inara offers lifeline for wounded refugee children. Based in Beirut, the International Network for Aid, Relief and Assistance (Inara) provides critical medical care for children from conflict areas who are unable to access treatment due to war.   See more at: http://gulfnews.com/gntv

Transcript

00:00On our last trip to Lebanon, which hosts up to 1.5 million refugees, we visited Aynara,

00:11an NGO that supports children affected by conflict with reconstructive surgery and physiotherapy.

00:17One of its patients, Adnan, miraculously escaped death after he was shot in the back by a sniper

00:22in Damascus when he was just 14 years old. The bullet narrowly missed his heart but became

00:28lodged in his spinal cord, paralysing him from the waist down.

00:58I didn't feel anything. I threw up for the first time. I didn't know what to do.

01:03I woke up, the light was on, the chair was on top of me, and I couldn't move.

01:08I could talk and scream, but I couldn't move at all.

01:11My life changed for the first time in the first year or two.

01:14I didn't want to go out into the world.

01:17I wanted people to come to me and leave me. I didn't want anyone to come to me at all.

01:22I met Aynara through my friend, Laura.

01:26I met Adnan through my friend. He taught me a lot of things.

01:30I met Aynara through my friend.

01:38Although Adnan's paralysis was irreversible, Aynara took him in,

01:42and with intensive physiotherapy and special standing assistance technology,

01:46has given him the chance to live a more independent life.

01:51So many children who come to us suffer from severe burns.

01:56Often these are burns from living like a refugee,

01:59for example, boiling liquids falling onto them or their tent catching on fire.

02:04This is around one third of the types of injuries that we see at Aynara.

02:08Aynara provides medical treatment to treat these children.

02:11We provide plastic surgery, often in order to perhaps separate fingers,

02:17which were fused together due to burns.

02:19What that means is, now they'll be able to go to school,

02:23they'll be able to pick up a pen again,

02:26they'll be able to use their fingers,

02:28whereas before they wouldn't have been able to do any of these things.

02:31Indeed, Aynara has helped scores of children affected by conflict,

02:35who have often suffered terrible burns due to the overcrowded conditions they live in as refugees.

02:41Rouba was just a few months old when she escaped with her parents to Lebanon from Syria,

02:46where bombings in Aleppo destroyed their home and killed two of her uncles.

02:50Just a couple of months later, and living in a tiny cramped apartment in north Lebanon,

02:54Rouba fell onto a boiling hot teapot, the scalding liquid scarring her body.

02:59When we first met, I got her number and we talked.

03:05I talked to her on WhatsApp, then I sent her the photos,

03:08but she didn't reply.

03:09I sent her the photos, and when she saw them, she immediately talked to me.

03:14They took good care of me, thank God.

03:18When we first got here, we went to see Dr. Ghassan and his wife,

03:22and he examined the girl to see how she was doing.

03:26Then they took a sample from her to see how she was doing,

03:29and they gave us a date for the surgery.

03:32Thank God the surgery was a success,

03:34but it took a long time,

03:36it took a long time for the surgery to go well.

03:40Hopefully, we'll see how we can do the other surgery.

03:44I'm sure she'll be fine.

03:54So when we first saw the parents, they were really desperate.

03:58This was the last thing they needed in a situation that was already difficult

04:02in terms of becoming refugees, becoming displaced from their home,

04:06living in really poor accommodation,

04:08and then having this burn that meant that they had to go into hospital

04:12for long periods of time.

04:14So it's been really over nine months almost since we saw Ruba

04:19and then treated her.

04:21Physically, she has, in terms of her health, she has improved a lot

04:25now that the wounds have closed.

04:27In terms of the socioeconomic background and the social situation

04:32that she lives in, the family still has the same precarious home situation

04:37that created the burn, and this is something that we're seeing

04:40in the refugee population throughout,

04:42is that these children are coming in with burns

04:45as a result of poor housing, overcrowding.

04:48In a country with so many displaced families reliant on aid,

04:51Inara aims to support special cases using donations to work with AUH

04:56in order to help victims who often have nowhere else to turn in Lebanon.

05:01A year after treatment, Inara has changed considerably,

05:04going from needing his father to assist him whenever he wanted to go out,

05:07to now living an extremely active and independent life.

05:10He's in good spirits and hopes one day to return to Syria.

05:31I miss Syria.

05:33The most important thing is that we can go back to the village

05:36and help the displaced families, the youth.

05:41I hope that we can live in stability,

05:44that no one will find out about our problems,

05:47and that we can go back to our country and live here,

05:50and see what the future holds for us.

06:00For more UN videos visit www.un.org

Category

Transcript

Recommended