Diana Prosthetics Center Project

In the early 2000s a clinic was established in Soran Kurdistan called the Diana Prosthetics Center which was dedicated to victims of armed conflict in the region who had lost limbs or mobility. It was the first of its kind in Iraq. The work was sponsored by numerous large foreign NGOs and staff were highly trained for free by the manufactures of the prosthetic equipment. The center provided not only prosthetics and orthotists but physical therapy, rehabilitation, vocational training and micro business loans to help disabled people re-enter society. In recent years the center has lost nearly all funding and receives no outside support besides normal salary from the Iraqi government. They are rarely able to secure the materials require to make or repair a few prosthetics and orthotists a year. A small amount of physical therapy continues but all other services which had been provided in the past have ended. Meanwhile the number of patients needing these types of services has only increased due in part to accidents with the millions of landmines still scattered through out the region.

Cultural effects

In the Middle Eastern culture, to loose a limb is to loose all status and dignity in your community. We believe that these people are valuable and deserve our care. Most have lost their limbs serving as Peshmerga (literally translated as “The ones who confront death”) protecting the Kurdish people. We want to help restore dignity to these people and show them that God sees them and has not forgotten them. This is an unreached group within an unreached group that have lost all hope. There is a better source of hope and this project gives us the ability to show that hope to the Kurdish people in a unique way.

Our plan

FAI has partnered with the Diana Prosthetics Center to help provide prosthetics supplies and rehabilitation to those who have lost limbs or suffered traumatic injury from accidents with landmines or conflict in the region. The local staff and facilities required already exist and are operating effectively. What is missing is the material. We have already brought a shipment of materials as a test run and the results were immediate and very beneficial. We want to continue bringing the much needed material and equipment the center requires to continue making new prosthetics and orthotics and repairing ones that are old or broken. We looking at ways to restart the other services that have had to be canceled due to lack of funds like vocational skills training. This project also complements our demining project by addressing both the source of the issue as well as the effects. This project has already been very well received and appreciated by key members of the community It has helped build trust which gives us greater access to engage with the needs of completely unreached people.

What we need

In the short term, funds given toward this project go exclusively toward purchasing materials and supplies for prosthetics and orthotics, and transporting it to the Diana Prosthetics Center in Soran. Most of these materials are produced in Germany and the Netherlands but we try to source them as cheaply as possible from suppliers in different parts of the world. As this project continues we plan to use funds to restart some of the vocational training for these patients. The cost of material to produce one new prosthetic for a patient is around $1600. Our goal is to bring in enough material quarterly to make new prosthetics for 10 patients who have been waiting for their first one. Some of these patients are double amputees as well.