Injured Children

While Stefan's Life is in the Balance

His Sister's Life is on Hold

In the aftermath of Haiti's earthquake ten year-old Fara has put her young life on hold to look after her injured brother, Stefan.

When the house started shaking violently, Fara says all the children started running, “but because Stefan is the smallest, he was last.”

A wall fell on the little three-year old. “I ran back inside to get him. His leg was broken!”

Infection quickly set in, eating away muscle and bone. Nerve damage has caused 'dropfoot'. Stefan may lose his leg, or part of it. Please pray for him, because losing a foot will affect his whole life.

Fara has dedicated herself to watching over him in hospital: bathing, feeding and dressing her brother. For three months she has lived on the floor under Stefan's crib - on a piece of cardboard! Her sisterly love seems almost biblical, like Miriam watching over baby Moses, until he is rescued from the Nile.

Fara has become her brother's keeper because her parents cannot be there. Their lives are spent gathering the basics of survival to keep their children alive. “Our home was destroyed,” Fara says, “and my family lives under a tarpaulin.”

This is how a child's injury and disability affects a family in poverty. Any time taken off work jeopardises the whole family. In a devastated place like Haiti, they may be the slowest to reach a food distribution point, or the last in the queue for clean water.

No-one else but cbm is focusing on this link between children’s disability and family survival.

Please click “Donate Now” to send an urgent gift to help injured and disabled children like Stefan.

• $40 will fund a set of orthosis components to build customised braces, enabling a child to walk.

• $63 will provide seven children with corrective shoes, allowing freedom and movement.

• $90 can provide an entire artificial limb - locally made to support livelihoods. [Our project at Kerala in India urgently needs funding for 54 of these limbs.]

Stefan was the littlest child, left behind and unable to escape disaster. Now we are fighting for his leg and his future. Please click “Donate Now” to help children rebuild their lives after terrible injuries like Stefan’s.