Landmine Horror
In Laos there is more that 7000 amputees due to landmines, and the number is growing daily. ADRA is training prosthetic technicians and supplying equipment to help these people. Todd Bruce tells Baird Barsumian about this special work.
Khamsay is a 26- year-old Laotian farmer. He is married with three children, including an infant. “I was working to clear the land,” he said, “so I could plant more rice for my growing family. I was preparing the soil with my hoe when everything exploded. I was hurting all over, and there was blood everywhere. My left leg throbbed, but it was gone!” His hoe had struck a “bombie,” a residual cluster bomblet, about the size of a baseball, dropped during the Vietnam conflict. From 1968 to 1973, this tiny country was subjected to 580,000 American bombing sorties, a planeload of bombs every eight minutes, 24- 7, for nine years.
But such hidden explosives aren’t unique to Laos. There are tens of millions of landmines scattered across the world.
Some 2000 civilians die every month, and thousands more lose limbs. Landmines target civilians, often those least able to afford medical care. Economic necessity forces people to enter former minefields in an attempt to raise crops, gather firewood or tend herds.
Children are particularly vulnerable to antipersonnel mines and rocket shells.
They’re often too inexperienced to be aware of landmines. They can’t read warning signs.
Many mines are brightly coloured and oddly shaped, appealing to the inquisitive child. In Afghanistan, kids play a game in which they throw stones at butterfly mines, the winner being the one who detonates it.
For a child who survives a mine accident, the physical injuries are usually far greater, and the psychological trauma more involved, and the economic prospects significantly bleaker than for an adult victim.
Children who survive face little prospect of going to school, receiving counselling, learning a skill other than begging, or getting married. And children need long-term follow-up care, often with repeated amputations, because bones grow through surrounding tissue. New prosthetics need to be fitted regularly.
Economically, victims are a drain on a family’s limited resources and unproductive.
“My left leg was gone,” said Khamsay, “and I felt hopeless. Without my leg, it is impossible to work my fields and provide food for my family.” Since 1992, different organisations—it was Princess Diana’s passion—have lobbied to ban landmines, and others work to find and eliminate unexploded ordnance. In the meantime, ADRA (Adventist Development and Relief Agency) is training prosthetic technicians and supplying equipment to serve the needs of more that 7000 amputees in Laos, a number that grows daily.
It was Khamsay’s wife who heard about the Namart Rehabilitation Center, operated by the Veteran’s Department.
The centre provides prosthetic devices to veterans, and civilians who are injured by the deadly remnants of a war waged years ago. Technicians from Laos regularly receive three weeks of ADRA-sponsored prosthetics training in Thailand.
“I’m getting a new leg,” says Khamsay.
“It’s like getting a new chance at life, my life, my old life. Without [this] leg, I am useless to my family. I cannot provide for them. Now, I can.”
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