The Children Who Lost Limbs in Gaza

Their futures hold ongoing surgery by the sounds of it:

The number of child amputees carries long-term implications, Abu-Sittah told me, listing his concerns. Israeli forces destroyed Gaza’s only facility for manufacturing prosthetics and rehabilitation, the Hamad hospital, which was inaugurated in 2019 and funded by Qatar. The leading manufacturer of child prosthetics, the German company Ottobock, is working to supply the necessary components to children up to the age of sixteen, with donors in place to fund the project through its foundation. Procuring prosthetics, however, is only the first step. “Child amputees need medical care every six months as they grow,” Abu-Sittah said. Because bone grows faster than soft tissue and severed nerves often reattach painfully to skin, child amputees require ongoing surgical interventions. In his experience, each limb requires eight to twelve more surgeries. To track this cohort, Abu-Sittah is consulting with the Centre for Blast Injury Studies at Imperial College London and the Global Health Institute at the American University of Beirut; their goal is to create a cloud-based database of medical records that can follow these kids wherever they go. For the rest of their lives, these amputees will need answers regarding their medical history. Abu-Sittah knows how this works: for years, as a pediatric trauma surgeon, he’s fielded calls from his former patients.