BBC News
Mother Rami Qattoush fades with Pride, as her nine -year -old son treats football for the first time from injury.
It is a big turning point in his recovery, because he traveled to Jordan last month after receiving Israeli military approval to leave Gaza.
Rami dreams of playing football one day, like Cristiano Ronaldo. But it still hurts him and a quick tire, he had to sit on a plastic chair, exhausted from effort.
His winding legs – one of them pierced – are bad scars and dried.
Each step forward is difficult.
Doctors in Gaza invited the family to agree to amputate both legs. But his eight -year -old brother, Abdul Salam, had already lost his lower right leg because of his injuries, and their mother Islam begged surgeons to save Rami’s limbs.
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The boys quickly slept in the family apartment on the third floor in Maghazi, Central Gaza, when, their mother says, Israeli air blow was targeting a building in the neighborhood, rain and shrapnel on children.
Ramiin 12-year-old brother Mustafa was killed and his body blew into pieces.
His heart, pierced by Shrapnel, was found only two days later, Islam says. The family gave him a separate burial.
The UN says that at least 14,500 children were killed and much more wounded in the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, who began after Hamas Gunmen attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing about 1200 people.
Medical evacuation from Gaza are critical, He writesbecause the health system there is devastated. Only 20 of 35 territory hospitals are partially functional and there is a lack of essential drugs and equipment.
It is estimated that 30,000 gazans are-after Rami and Abdul Salam-Stalo injuries that change the life that will require years of rehabilitation, According to the World Health Organization.
This helped make it easier to evacuate hundreds of patients from February 1, when Rafah moved with Egypt again open to them. But he says that between 12,000 and 14,000 people – among them 4,500 children – should still be taken to treatment.
“The war requested a horrific toll for the Gaza children,” said the UN (UNICEF) Children’s Fund (UNICEF), when an agreement was published in January in January.
Rama has withstand several surgical procedures without painkillers, anesthesia or antibiotics, said his mother BBC. The wounds became so infected with him that they crawled with maggots. Doctors did not think his legs could be saved.
“Rami was in such pain, he screamed, ‘God, you took my brother, now take me too! “, Says Islam.
And then a rare chance appeared in January – that Rama and his mother evacuated Jordan for treatment at a specialized hospital for reconstructive surgery, operated by Médecins Sans Fronticres (MSF) in Jordan’s capital, Amman.
He is currently healing 13 children from Gaza, but has the ability to take dozens more.
“This is the only hospital I know about providing physical and mental rehabilitation for victims of war,” says Marc Schakal, MSF program manager for Jordan, Syria and Yemen. “It’s multidisciplinary care, not just surgery.”
Rami has a psychologist, surgeon and physiotherapist. It also nourishes, trained and taught at the MSF small “school of the future”, a light assembly building based on the hospital. After missing so much education, he is a sharp student.
But he also missed Father Mohammed and his brother Abdul Salam – who needed a prosthetic leg, but couldn’t leave Gaza with him.
They are grateful for his treatment, but he and his mother want to go home as soon as possible.
“Gaza is beautiful,” Rami told me. “In Gaza before the war, we used to have treatment, but then help stopped.”
With institutions and expertise at MSF Hospital, it is now making rapid progress.
“He arrived in a wheelchair,” says his physiotherapist, Zaid Alqaisi, who created a strong relationship with Rami, helping him walk again.
“He is very motivated. He wants to return to his friends and his family. He wants to make his father proud.”
He also wants to swim again in the sea in Gaza.
But many more surgery lie in advance, and Rama and his mother have no idea when they will return home.
Not knowing if they would return to Gaza another huge stress for all Palestinian patients at the top of their trauma, according to the psychologist Zainoun al-Sunna.
The sharing of the hospital room with Rami was also withdrawn the traumatized five-year-old boy, Abdul Rahman al-Madhoun, who also needs surgery on his feet.
He was in her mother’s arms when she was killed at an air strike in October 2023, along with his brothers and sisters. At the Gaza Hospital, a nurse trying to cheer him up told him that his mother had turned into a star.
“Since then, he looks at the sky at night, looking for the stars and talking to them,” says his aunt Sabah. “Don’t talk to other people. But I hear him say to the stars:” Mom I ate, my mom I’ll sleep now. “
Psychological injuries to hospital patients are often more difficult than physical.
“Some will never recover,” says Hospital director Roshan Kumarasamy, who says a reconstructive surgery will need to be needed on Gaza patients for years to come because of the “unimaginably massive spectrum of injury.”
But Rami is strong and determined. When he breaks in tears, thinking of Mustafa, he assures me that he is “okay”.
And when he and his mother manage to go to his family in Gaza on a video call, Rami wants to show them how he can stand on his two legs now.
His father cheered him up, saying, “Rami, you are a hero.”
And now his family has another reason to celebrate – Rama’s brother, Abdul Salam and his father, Israel just got permission to leave Gaza and Jordan.
In the coming weeks, it should be equipped with a new leg, allowing both of the injured boys to learn how to walk.
