A former taekwondo competitor who lost his arms from the elbow in a car crash has been given two prosthetic arms.
31-year-old Muthana AlZoubi came to Jordan with his wife and three children after fleeing from the conflict in Syria.
Having lost both his arms from the elbow in a car crash, he went to the Life Rehabilitation Centre (LRC) in Irbid, in the north of Jordan, wondering if they could do anything to help him. Islamic Relief is running a project at LRC in association with the German-Syrian Association for the Promotion of Freedom and Human Rights and with funding from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. The project offers physiotherapy and prostheses for people who have lost limbs, many from the conflict in Syria.
Assma Zaghlool, Project Manager for Islamic Relief in Jordan, said: “Muthana’s case was very challenging technically. One of his elbows was deformed from the fracture and the other was paralysed with no movement at all.
“The prostheses supplier used a new method to accommodate the fixed elbows and give Muthana the mechanical skills to improve his life. After several fitting and training sessions, he received his final prostheses.”
Muthana AlZoubi was so determined to use his new arms as soon as possible that he grabbed a pen and wrote a thank you letter to the project team.
The project aims to support Syrian and Jordanian people with disabilities who are now dependent on rehabilitative measures or on prostheses to recover their range of motion. The project opened in April 2014 and so far 57 people have been given prosthetic limbs, and 573 people have undergone physiotherapy.
The project will continue into 2015 and aims to provide prostheses to a total of 210 people.