Earlier this month, Maya Merhi, 8, who was born with no legs due to a congenital condition, was moving around a Syrian displaced persons camp on artificial limbs made of plastic tubing and tin cans.
But after pictures of her plight, including those taken by AFP in Syria, were seen around the world, she was brought to Istanbul for treatment. And her life should be about to change.
Yesterday in Istanbul a disabled Syrian girl swapped out her tin can legs for prosthetics. Fleeing Syria’s civil war Maya, from Aleppo, has been living in a camp in Idlib. What a brave and beautiful little girl – her life now transformed by a doctors act of kindness. @Reuters pic.twitter.com/H3aojkIVOh
— Emily Wither (@ewither) July 6, 2018
“Maya will walk,” said Dr Mehmet Zeki Culcu, the prosthetics specialist treating her at an Istanbul clinic. “God willing, in three months time.”
In today’s world, children like 8-year-old Maya wear tin cans as legs: pic.twitter.com/G0mQqc5Ptw
— Rosie Scammell (@rosiescammell) June 21, 2018
Maya, originally from Aleppo region, had until her sudden transfer to Istanbul been living with her father at a camp for displaced people in the Idlib region of northern Syria, victims of Syria’s over seven year civil war.
Earlier this month, Maya Merhi, 8, who was born with no legs due to a congenital condition, was moving around a Syrian displaced persons camp on artificial limbs made of plastic tubing and tin cans pic.twitter.com/tH1cBcGBGd
— Raziye Akkoç (@RazAkkoc) June 30, 2018
Her homemade prosthetics had been cobbled together by her father Mohammad Merhi, 34, who also shares the same disability known as congenital amputation which means the person is born without lower limbs.
-AFP
First new steps for Syrian girl who used tin cans for legs https://t.co/6nKrkfQrQX pic.twitter.com/woCqayGnTP
— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) July 6, 2018