Palestinian teen who lost leg in Gaza gets prosthetic limb in Colorado
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct a misspelled name.
DENVER (KDVR) — Colorado doctors were part of an effort to help a Palestinian teen get a new prosthetic limb after she lost her leg in the conflict in Gaza.
Ahed Bseiso is now in Colorado with her new prosthetic leg. Ahed was in northern Gaza, where she lives, when a missile strike left her without a leg.
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Ahed can now walk with a new prosthetic leg. Back in December, her uncle, a medical doctor in Gaza, had to amputate her limb on a kitchen table in an active warzone.
“Use dish soap and Clorox to sterilize her wound and took a kitchen knife to perform an amputation in the kitchen,” Dr. Reema Wahdan said.
Ahed traveled from Gaza to Egypt to South Carolina and Denver with help from the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. Wahdan is with the relief fund, she and Dr. Omar Mubarak, both Denver residents and Palestinians themselves, helped bring Ahed to Colorado.
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The Hanger Clinic was vital to helping get Ahed walking again. She was fitted with her new prosthetic last Saturday.
“Hanger has a program where they will help people who cannot who don’t have the means for a limb,” Mubarak said.
“By the end of the day she was able to walk,” Mubarak said. “It was actually very amazing.”
Mubarak helped custom-fit the prosthetic exactly to Ahed’s leg.
“She did one lap using the parallel bars and then she turned around and started her other lap and just on her own lifted up her hands and took several steps,” Mubarak said.
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Both Wahdan and Mubarak are hoping to bring more Palestinian children affected by the war to the United States for help.
“We’re looking at 22,000 children in Gaza as after October,” Wahdan said, “that have and will need prosthetic limbs.”
Ahed is in the United States with her sister but will reunite with her father in Belgium soon.
Click here to donate to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund and here to help Ahed on her journey.
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