The Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement in the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Political-Military Affairs has awarded $1.5 million to the Montgomery Village Rotary Club's Basra, Iraq, Prosthetics Project. The project was created to help restore mobility and dignity to approximately 5,000 amputees in the Basra area who were injured by landmines and explosive remnants of war due to various conflicts dating back to the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s.
The Basra Project will be working in conjunction with the Al Hussein Society in Amman, Jordan, to train experienced Iraqi prosthetists from the Basra, Iraq, Prosthetic Centre to use new prosthetic technology. The prosthetists will receive this advanced training in Amman and then return to Basra to treat their injured fellow citizens on an additional suite of advanced equipment to be delivered to Iraq in the near future.
The effort is being led by Linda A.H. Smythe, Montgomery Village Rotary Club member and the project's founder, as well as Ted Hamady and Marlene Thorn from the Rotary Club of Washington DC, and members from the Amman Cosmopolitan Rotary Club.
"We are truly grateful for the opportunity that State Department has afforded us," Smythe said. "They have empowered us to follow our dream."
The Basra Project has also been supplied with in-kind and direct funding totaling $825,000 from the State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, Rotary Clubs in the United States and abroad, Rotary International, and the International Monetary Fund. In addition, contributions and assistance have been received from Hanger Orthopedic Group, Bethesda, Maryland; HRH Princess Majda Raad of Jordan; the Mosaic Foundation; the Al Hussein Society of Amman, Jordan; Suburban Hospital of Bethesda, Maryland; Airschott Inc.; and others.
For more information about the Basra, Iraq, Prosthetics Project, visit: www.basraproject.com
