00:00On our last trip to Lebanon, which hosts up to 1.5 million refugees, we visited Aynara,
00:11an NGO that supports children affected by conflict with reconstructive surgery and physiotherapy.
00:17One of its patients, Adnan, miraculously escaped death after he was shot in the back by a sniper
00:22in Damascus when he was just 14 years old. The bullet narrowly missed his heart but became
00:28lodged in his spinal cord, paralysing him from the waist down.
00:58I didn't feel anything. I threw up for the first time. I didn't know what to do.
01:03I woke up, the light was on, the chair was on top of me, and I couldn't move.
01:08I could talk and scream, but I couldn't move at all.
01:11My life changed for the first time in the first year or two.
01:14I didn't want to go out into the world.
01:17I wanted people to come to me and leave me. I didn't want anyone to come to me at all.
01:22I met Aynara through my friend, Laura.
01:26I met Adnan through my friend. He taught me a lot of things.
01:30I met Aynara through my friend.
01:38Although Adnan's paralysis was irreversible, Aynara took him in,
01:42and with intensive physiotherapy and special standing assistance technology,
01:46has given him the chance to live a more independent life.
01:51So many children who come to us suffer from severe burns.
01:56Often these are burns from living like a refugee,
01:59for example, boiling liquids falling onto them or their tent catching on fire.
02:04This is around one third of the types of injuries that we see at Aynara.
02:08Aynara provides medical treatment to treat these children.
02:11We provide plastic surgery, often in order to perhaps separate fingers,
02:17which were fused together due to burns.
02:19What that means is, now they'll be able to go to school,
02:23they'll be able to pick up a pen again,
02:26they'll be able to use their fingers,
02:28whereas before they wouldn't have been able to do any of these things.
02:31Indeed, Aynara has helped scores of children affected by conflict,
02:35who have often suffered terrible burns due to the overcrowded conditions they live in as refugees.
02:41Rouba was just a few months old when she escaped with her parents to Lebanon from Syria,
02:46where bombings in Aleppo destroyed their home and killed two of her uncles.
02:50Just a couple of months later, and living in a tiny cramped apartment in north Lebanon,
02:54Rouba fell onto a boiling hot teapot, the scalding liquid scarring her body.
02:59When we first met, I got her number and we talked.
03:05I talked to her on WhatsApp, then I sent her the photos,
03:08but she didn't reply.
03:09I sent her the photos, and when she saw them, she immediately talked to me.
03:14They took good care of me, thank God.
03:18When we first got here, we went to see Dr. Ghassan and his wife,
03:22and he examined the girl to see how she was doing.
03:26Then they took a sample from her to see how she was doing,
03:29and they gave us a date for the surgery.
03:32Thank God the surgery was a success,
03:34but it took a long time,
03:36it took a long time for the surgery to go well.
03:40Hopefully, we'll see how we can do the other surgery.
03:44I'm sure she'll be fine.
03:54So when we first saw the parents, they were really desperate.
03:58This was the last thing they needed in a situation that was already difficult
04:02in terms of becoming refugees, becoming displaced from their home,
04:06living in really poor accommodation,
04:08and then having this burn that meant that they had to go into hospital
04:12for long periods of time.
04:14So it's been really over nine months almost since we saw Ruba
04:19and then treated her.
04:21Physically, she has, in terms of her health, she has improved a lot
04:25now that the wounds have closed.
04:27In terms of the socioeconomic background and the social situation
04:32that she lives in, the family still has the same precarious home situation
04:37that created the burn, and this is something that we're seeing
04:40in the refugee population throughout,
04:42is that these children are coming in with burns
04:45as a result of poor housing, overcrowding.
04:48In a country with so many displaced families reliant on aid,
04:51Inara aims to support special cases using donations to work with AUH
04:56in order to help victims who often have nowhere else to turn in Lebanon.
05:01A year after treatment, Inara has changed considerably,
05:04going from needing his father to assist him whenever he wanted to go out,
05:07to now living an extremely active and independent life.
05:10He's in good spirits and hopes one day to return to Syria.
05:31I miss Syria.
05:33The most important thing is that we can go back to the village
05:36and help the displaced families, the youth.
05:41I hope that we can live in stability,
05:44that no one will find out about our problems,
05:47and that we can go back to our country and live here,
05:50and see what the future holds for us.
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