Dutch lead team to heal Ugandan mutilations

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Vancouver Sun, Page A13, 29-Dec-2005

Dutch lead team to heal Ugandan mutilations

Group aids civilians who have been brutally disfigured by rebels

By Mike Pflanz

 

KITGUM, Uganda -- Villagers disfigured by rebels terrorizing northern Uganda

have for the first time undergone plastic surgery to reconstruct their faces.

 

Hundreds of civilians have been attacked by the Lord's Resistance Army during a

guerrilla war now entering its third decade.

 

It is the same group that shot dead Steve Willis, the British manager of a chain

of backpackers' lodges, in November.

 

The rebels -- many of them kidnapped children -- slice off lips, ears, fingers

and breasts to cow the rural population into submission.

 

Now some of their victims can eat, drink, talk and smile again after being

surgically given new lips. Sabina Abwo, a 30-year-old mother of seven, is one.

She was collecting firewood near her village when she and her friends, including

several young girls, were ambushed in March.

 

" They put us together in a line then one leader who was about 20 years old took

a razor blade from his pocket and gave it to another who was young, about nine,

and told him to cut off our ears and lips,'' she told The Daily Telegraph.

 

" I was first. Then they did the same to three more and then took away the young

girls who we have not seen again.''

 

Sabina's wounds bled for three days while she struggled to reach the nearest

hospital, St Joseph's in Kitgum, more than 50 kilometres from her village.

 

After two months of treatment, she was discharged but could barely talk, eat or

drink until the operation a fortnight ago, conducted by a Dutch surgeon with

help from Medecins Sans Frontieres.

 

Hers was one of an initial 14 reconstructive procedures carried out at St.

Joseph's, a basic missionary hospital in Kitgum, Uganda's northernmost market

town.

 

" Now I will be able to go out to the market and people will not look at me so

much,'' Sabina said, trying to smile as she shielded her surgical wounds from

the dust.

 

Three other women and four men were treated for mutilation to their lips, one

18-year-old boy for a gunshot to his jaw, four children for cleft palates and

one 13-year-old boy was given a skin graft after a burn to his left foot.

 

The surgical team was led by Dr. Rein Zeeman, the head of the charitable

organization Interplast Holland, and included a Ugandan plastic surgeon and

anaesthetist.

 

" We selected these first patients based on the fact that their mutilation has

made it impossible for them to lead a normal life,'' said Dr Zeeman.

 

" You have to realise that it is almost impossible for a person without lips to

eat or drink. We want to help this group as quickly as possible.''

 

" It is impossible to overstate the pain these women have been through,'' said

Rosemary Yaya, one of MSF's nurses.

 

 

Being a pacifist between wars is as easy as being a vegetarian

between meals. " --Ammon Hennacy

[Guest guest]

OMG - at least some of them are getting treatment now.

 

Jo