Seeing one-and-a-half-year-old Alaa Awad lying in her hospital bed, her lower body swathed in a cast, you'd expect to see worry and fear on her family's faces. But peer into the little girl's eyes and those of her grandmother Elham Mohammad Awad and you'll glimpse hope, happiness and relief. That's because Alaa, although born with a condition called bilateral dislocation where both her hips were dislocated, will soon be able to walk thanks to life-changing surgery carried out by the Dubai-based charity, The Little Wings Foundation.
Left untreated, Alaa would have had to limp through life with a twisted pelvis unable to skip or dance or play like other children. As an adult the condition would have prevented her from having children. But thanks to the charity she can now look forward to a normal life.
Living with around 70 members of her extended family in a house in the Gaza Strip, Alaa's every move was under scrutiny because her elder sister, Ilham, now four, had the same condition.
"Ilham was treated by The Little Wings Foundation for the same condition in 2009," says the girls' grandmother. "So we all watched out for any disturbing signs in Alaa when she started walking.''
Their vigil paid off. Noticing she was unable to walk properly when she turned one, Alaa's parents Mohammad and Nisma Awad promptly consulted a doctor who diagnosed their daughter's condition. It could have been treated with a brace if it had been found earlier, and maybe she could have avoided undergoing surgery.
With little income and having to look after three other children, Alaa's family were unsure how they could raise the funds - around Dh75,000 - required for the operation.
Remembering that Ilham was helped by the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund (PCRF) which conducts medical camps organised by The Little Wings Foundation in the Gaza Strip regularly, they decided to approach the fund once again in November last year. Dr Marc Sinclair, the founder of Little Wings, immediately recognised the need for quick intervention in Alaa's case and arranged for her to be flown to Dubai for surgery at Medcare Hospital in the emirate earlier this month.
Orthopaedic surgeon Dr Sinclair conducted the correctional surgery free of cost. He relocated and realigned Alaa's hips and now she is in a cast from her hip downwards to hold the bones in place. She will be under observation for a few weeks until the bones are set and will remain in Dubai until she is healthy and fit to fly back home. It could take about a month.
"Ilham was two and a half years old at the time of surgery and now has a near normal gait. The doctors here tell me Alaa has a better chance of recovery because she is younger,'' says the girls' grandmother, smiling with hope.
Helping youngsters across the globe
Alaa is just one of the 90 children the foundation has operated on from across the world over the past five years. Apart from arranging and conducting extremely expensive and intensive operations free of charge, the foundation has helped thousands of children get a better life through prompt and timely medical intervention to tackle serious health conditions.
It has also helped to send three children requiring expensive and expert intervention related to musculo-skeletal conditions to specialist hospitals throughout Europe and America for surgery.
Alaa is just one of their current patients in Dubai. Sethumuglee Kothigoda, a financial analyst with Shell in Dubai, is thrilled that his daughter Linethama Kothigoda, a Grade 2 student of Dubai Scholars, is one of the foundation's success stories. The seven-year-old was born with a congenital condition called pseudo arthrosis where she had a hairline fracture in the lower part of her right leg that despite casts and surgeries would not heal. She had to move around on a walker.
Sethumuglee recalls, "Since the bone wouldn't heal it had begun to bend at an odd angle and at one point we were told that a section of the bone was ‘dead' and that her leg might have to be amputated."
Worried that their daughter would lose her leg, Sethumuglee approached the Little Wings Foundation for help in 2009. Dr Sinclair and his team carried out a series of operations on the little girl's leg, but found that the case was complicated and the bone refused to heal.
Dr Sinclair then invited a few experts from the US who studied Linethama's case and suggested she be flown to Baltimore's Sinai Hospital for surgery. In 2010, Linethama was admitted there, where she underwent surgery with commercially prepared bone grafts.
However, learning that the family could not afford the expense of around a million dirhams required for the treatment, Dr Sinclair stepped in and offered to help pay for the flight of the daughter and her mother, Naddera.
Thanks to him, the US hospital also waived its fees as a gesture of goodwill. Now Linethama's bone has completely healed and her leg has been saved.
"I am looking forward to being able to dance and walk freely with my friends in my school,'' says Linethma with a big grin.
"We wanted to save this lively young child from amputation and usually we rely completely on the donations and goodwill of other surgeons and hospitals around the world,'' says Gillian Beale, a surgical nurse at The Children's Medical Centre (TMC) on Al Wasl Road, run by Dr Sinclair in Dubai, and one of the core directors of Little Wings Foundation.
"In this case the doctors at Baltimore did a fantastic job," she says. "Through Little Wings we want to give the children with musculo-skeletal disorders in the Middle East and North Africa region a second chance at life."
Linethama now requires a couple more operations that Dr Sinclair and his team will carry out in Dubai to ensure that the length of both her legs is the same. Although she has had six surgeries in a span of three years, she is unfazed by the pain or the discomfort as she happily recites nursery rhymes and smiles through all the pain.
Giving children their freedom back
Like Alaa, Ilham and Linethama, numerous children in Palestine, Eritrea, Haiti and the UAE who cannot afford expensive surgery have been operated on by the foundation.
Registered in the UK as a charity in 2007, the Foundation - called Little Wings as it hopes to give back to children the freedom they ‘lost' because of physical, economic and perceived social barriers - operates out of Dubai as its founder, Dr Sinclair, along with five of its six core founders, are based here.
The founders include Marc's brother, Germany-based anaesthetist Dr David Sinclair, orthopaedic nurse Gillian, Allison Armstrong, in charge of managing the day-to-day finances of the foundation and Aileen Culligan, who handles the marketing and public relations activities of the organisation.
The chief financial officer Janine Lucas is based in the UK. She deals with the strict regulations of the charity commission and sets the budgets based on donations. Besides this core group the charity is dependent on many volunteer doctors and nurses who accompany them on their mission around the world.
Elaborating on how the foundation works, nurse Gillian describes the process. "We typically have two missions, lasting five days each, in a year. During the mission, The Little Wings Foundation holds a day clinic where children requiring medical intervention are referred. Last year in October at our mission in Gaza we saw 110 children. About 30 needed surgeries and we operated on 15 during the mission,'' she says.
"We usually decide depending on our medical supplies and needs of the children. We had five full days of surgery beginning from 8am and ending at 6pm with some surgeries taking as long as five hours. The remaining 15 were put on a waiting list to be either brought to Dubai or referred to other surgeons depending on their condition. We make very good medical records - one for the parents, one for the PCRF and one for our foundation making the diagnosis and recommendation.
"All the details are put into our database and we also identify children that require complicated surgeries abroad."
The goal of The Little Wings Foundation is to help needy children in their daily struggle and give them the tools they need to succeed in life. "We believe that every child, independent of race, religion or gender, should have the same opportunity in life,'' says Dr Sinclair. "The Little Wings Foundation supports children that miss this chance due to a physical disability by facilitating the required treatment.''
Little Wings has partnered with many other agencies and organisations involved in similar activities such as the PCRF, the Al Ain Oasis Hospital and the University Children's Hospital in Basel, Switzerland, to treat children with musculo-skeletal deformities. The foundation members are determined to do what it takes to give children with physical deformity a fighting chance in life.
"I want to focus on scores of children in this region in need of surgery for musculo-skeletal disorders,'' says Dr Sinclair. "The World Health Organisation (WHO) establishes a direct link between disability that leads to dropping out of school and the lack of education, which in turn leads to poverty. Children who drop out of school owing to their disability are not able to earn a living. I wanted our foundation to contribute directly towards taking these children out of this vicious cycle by doing surgeries that can correct their deformity and give them an equal chance," says the doctor, who got into charity at the age of 17 as a high school student in Brussels, where he was born.
As a young volunteer he worked in a home for the elderly and says he was overwhelmed by the experience. "I found charity work to be truly fulfilling,'' he says. After completing his medical studies in Tubingen, Germany, he worked in various hospitals in Switzerland and Germany before deciding to come to Abu Dhabi as a locum at the Shaikh Khalifa Hospital. "My wife Myriam, son Jordan, 16, and daughter Vivienne, 12, all loved the place and we decided to settle down here. I saw an opportunity to work from here and reach out to children in this region."
He says there are several children in the UAE with musculo-skeletal condition requiring surgery but whose families cannot afford the financial expenses. Little Wings wants to help such youngsters in the UAE and also overseas, says Dr Sinclair.
"We'd also like to extend our work to Northern Iraq, Kurdistan and other such regions gradually,'' he says.
So rewarding for the medical team
The Little Wings team of medical practitioners are happy that they have been able to make a positive difference in the lives of several children. "It is amazingly fulfilling to see a smile on the face of children whose lives we have helped improve,'' says Gillian.
She narrates the case of Abdul Rahman, an eight-year-old boy who had a congenital condition where parts of his spine were fused, causing his ribs to tighten around his lungs, severely restricting the growth of the organs. "The child would have eventually developed respiratory complications had we not intervened," she says.
Abdul was initially brought to Dr Sinclair's Children's Medical Centre to correct his hands, which were bent near the wrists.
"After we did an initial check-up we found that more severe than his hand condition was the problem that was affecting his lungs,'' Gillian says.
Abdul was flown to Switzerland where he underwent specialised surgery that included inserting an implant in his chest to correct his condition. This implant corrects the spine and allows the ribcage to make space for the lungs to grow. The little boy will require two or three surgeries more as he grows. But the implant has given him a chance to study in a regular school and be independent, says Gillian.
Dr Sinclair wants every child to reach their potential. "There are many children in our societies who are intelligent and independent but owing to a physical deformity are compelled to sit in a school meant for the mentally challenged,'' he says Dr Sinclair. "I feel regular schools must take on the responsibility of integrating these students.
"It's unjust that a child who is intelligent but suffers from cerebral palsy has to be schooled with children for the mentally challenged."
The foundation is expecting about four children in the forthcoming months from Palestine and other regions who will fly into Dubai for correctional operations.
"We are trying to use our medical skills to give a chance of happiness to families who cannot afford to pay,'' says Gillian.
"We would like more medical volunteers with experience in orthopaedics to come forward and offer their services - hospitals willing to offer their facilities, doctors willing to offer special expertise and people to make contributions. Together we can make a difference in children's lives."
Alaa's grandmother Elham will surely vouch for that. "I do not have words to thank the doctors who have been so kind to give my little granddaughter the chance to live a normal life," she smiles. "I am indebted to the team."
Then she hands the doctors home-made sweets that she has brought as a token of her gratitude before giving little Alaa a cuddle.
Making a difference
- Who: The Little Wings Foundation
- Where: Dubai
- What: Offering surgery to children with severe musculo-skeletal conditions so they can have a better life
