Decades of war have resulted in a high demand for prosthetics – and patients are anxious to visit clinics as they finally reopen
Concentration is etched on Hussein’s face as he walks along a scuffed yellow line painted on the floor of the clinic’s rehabilitation room. He’s getting a feel for his new prosthetic.
Hussein lost his left leg below the knee in 1987 when he stepped on a landmine while fishing at Lake Dukan, around 100km (62 miles) east of Erbil in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq. Mines and other unexploded remnants of successive wars litter the landscape, causing new injuries every year. More than half the clinic’s 15,100 patients are amputees. Roughly 4,600 of them lost limbs as a result of conflict – 2,500 of these to landmines.
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