AN eight-year-old Syrian girl born without legs has received a new set of prosthetics in Turkey.
Maya Meri has been in the spotlight since images of her plight hit social media last month. She was filmed in a camp for the displaced in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province walking around on contraptions her father made from tuna cans, plastic tubes and fabric.
“I thought of doing something that would protect her while on the ground from stones and other things, so I made these limbs for her,” said her father, Mohammed.
Maya was born without legs because of a condition called congenital amputation. Her story moved one Turkish prosthetics specialist to reach out to Turkey’s largest humanitarian organisation, which evacuated her from Syria.
Maya is now in Istanbul with her father, where she is walking using her new prosthetics. Originally from Aleppo province, the Meri family had to move to escape the fighting.
The homemade prosthetics allowed Maya to move about more easily, and helped her learn how to balance, shortening a two-week process to a single day when she was fitted with her new legs.
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