Wounded Iraqis Left Broken and Burdened

At the rear of the facility is the rehabilitation center and prosthetics workshop, where Thamir Aziz, a physician, oversees about 40 technicians who craft arms and legs out of aluminum, plaster and polypropylene. His warehouse's shelves are stocked with artificial body parts: hands and feet of varying sizes, titanium knee and elbow joints, and aluminum shafts that will become limbs.

"Most of our equipment was looted during the invasion, so we do the best we can with what we have," Aziz said in a recent interview. "We have pages and pages of people waiting for prosthetics, most for at least five months."

For almost two years, the facility and Iraq's Health Ministry have been unable to import raw materials and manufactured parts for prosthetics from the French and German companies that make them, Khudair said.

Some doctors blame a financial dispute with the companies over an order that did not meet specifications. Others, privately, blame government corruption or say it has become much more difficult to obtain technical equipment because most humanitarian aid organizations have withdrawn from Iraq, concerned about the security risk.

Whatever the explanation, with supplies dwindling and about five new amputees arriving daily, Khudair said that unless a new shipment shows up soon, he will be forced to close the prosthetics wing in less than two months.

"I always imagine: What if this happened to me? Where would I go if I lost a limb and this hospital can't help me?" Khudair said. "It is a very hard situation. Our patients need our help and we cannot give it. I don't want to close the workshop, but what else can I do?"

In a nearby rehabilitation room, Ali Majeed grimaced each time he shifted weight from his sinewy left leg to the aluminum and plastic prosthesis that runs between his right hip and the ground. He paused to catch his breath, his arms draped over a pair of metal railings, as a hospital technician helped him shuffle a few more steps.

Majeed, 40, with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, said he was carrying a bag of groceries home in the Baghdad neighborhood of Shuhada last October when a gunman in a passing car sprayed his lower body with bullets.

"I don't have a problem with anybody, so I don't know why it happened," he said. "But the situation in this country makes you exposed to danger, even if you are just out for a walk near your home. You hear shooting wherever you go."

He and his family recently moved in with his wife's parents. "People help us. Our relatives help us. But I used to live in my own house," he said. "I am a different person now. To think I can't help my family or be there for them troubles me always. There is a lot of pressure in depending on other people."

Nearby, Hussein Abbas hops on his one remaining leg to maintain his balance. Once a welder, he said he now has trouble standing for long periods and has not been back to work since last May, when shrapnel from a rocket-propelled grenade shredded his left leg from his ankle to his thigh.

It happened during a power outage on a hot spring night, he said. He went to sleep on the roof of his home in the city of Iskandariyah, 40 miles south of Baghdad. Hours later he woke to sound of men attacking a police station across the street. They were in kaffiyehs, the Arab scarves worn by some insurgents. As Abbas scrambled inside his house, a grenade exploded a few yards away.