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UNICEF United Nations Children's Fund |
Zurab
Ismailov was walking home with his brother and friends after a karate lesson.
They had crossed a street on their way to the bus stop when an explosion occurred.
Zurab had stepped on a land mine. He woke up in the hospital. This happened
in Grozny on November 25, 2001.
As a result of the explosion, the 15-year-old boy lost a leg and was blinded in one eye. The shrapnel damaged the nerve endings in his hands.
Zurab will have to gradually learn to live in a completely new way. He has left Grozny with his mother and brother, leaving his father (who works in the oil industry) behind, and gone to Ingushetiya in order to be closer to the Vladikavkaz Orthopedic Prosthesis Workshop. This is virtually the only place in the North Caucasus where Zurab can get a prosthesis and undergo special psychological therapy.
This is taking place as part of a joint program by the UN Children’s
Fund (UNICEF) and the Orthopedic Prosthesis 
Workshop.
Under the auspices of the program, UNICEF workers and their non-profit partner
organization, Voice of the Mountains, continually keep track of the children
who need prostheses, then gather them into a special bus and bring them into
Vladikavkaz to examine and measure them for their prostheses. For the prostheses
to be properly fitted to their legs, the children have to visit the workshop’s
technicians at least four or five times. Last year, artificial limbs were made
for 60 children who had stepped on land mines in Chechnya. The children spent
time with a psychologist, and saw skits performed at the prosthetic medical
center by actors from the Vladikav-kaz Drama Theatre. Transportation, meals,
entertainment, and the prostheses themselves were all paid for out of the funds
for UNICEF’s Emergency program in the North Caucasus.
Center Director Vladislav Yesiev says that his staff has a full workload. It is difficult for them to take more than fifteen children a week, since all work must be done quickly and with quality.
Zurab is dreaming of the time when he will be able to walk on his prosthesis and once again to attend school. He loves history, algebra, and adventure books. He is becoming somewhat withdrawn.
His
fellow victim, ten-year-old Adam Bersanov, lost his left leg when he stepped
on a mine in an abandoned building at the Sunzhenskii Region’s Assinovskaya
village. This was in October of last year. Adam is now slowly learning how to
walk, but he still does not want to talk about what happened. Four-year-old
Bebulat Mudalov stepped on a mine in the basement of his own home in the village
of Avtory, to which his family had returned following the cessation of military
operations in the Republic. These are just a few of the victims of the land
mine war.
According to the latest UN estimates, there may be around 500,000 land mines on the territory of Chechnya. From 7,000 to 10,000 people have already fallen victim to mines and other unexploded ordnance. Among these were 4,000 children.
So that the number of those who are injured or killed by land mines can be brought down, UNICEF staff are constantly performing informational and public awareness work to warn children how land mines might look, and how to avoid danger.
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When a certain delegation visited a designated “Baby-friendly” maternity home for the first time, they were astonished: the first question they asked was, “Why is it so quiet?” They were used to hearing babies in birthing homes cry, usually quite loudly; in Baby-friendly hospitals, however, it is always quiet. Newborns are housed in one wing with their mothers, and are fed, not according to a strict schedule devised by adults, but whenever they want to eat. This is why they don’t cry; it’s all very simple.
As
the demographic indicators for the Russian Federation grow increasingly worse
with declining rates of birth and natural population growth, modern technologies
aimed at improving the health of mothers and their children are acquiring special
importance. One highly effective technology that does not require large material
investment is the WHO/UNICEF Baby-friendly Hospital Initiative. When babies
are exclusively breast-fed, they quickly put on weight, infant mortality declines,
and there are no incidences of intestinal infection. Doctors believe that the
more a mother breast-feeds her child, the closer their relationship will be
in the future, and the fewer the chances that the child will break away from
the family.
The Initiative has won the approval of the Russian Federation Ministry of Health. It has become part of the national health care policy to protect and improve the health of mothers and their children. A teaching and training center for promoting, supporting, and encouraging breast-feeding has been set up and is now operating.
At present, 75 maternity homes in 25 Russian regions have been designated Baby-friendly Hospitals. This WHO/UNICEF initiative has obviously caught on and continues to grow. The more healthy children there are, the better.
