Laura Villadiego

Phnom Penh, 28 nov (EFE).-mines anti-personnel landmines have made Cambodia a whole generation of amputees who are struggling sought a future in the country marked by stigma and the lack of specialized medical care and free.

Cambodia is one of the countries with the highest concentration of anti-personnel mines, with at least four million devices, which were placed during nearly three decades of war between Khmer Rouge and the different Governments.

More than 60,000 people have been victims of these explosives since 1979, according to data of the Cambodian Centre for action against mines (CMAC), which has led to one out of 290 people in the country suffered an amputation.

Most of these mutilated, many of them former soldiers, have returned to their home provinces, where they do odd jobs or are maintained by their families, although many have reformed street musicians or small merchants.

In major cities like the capital, Phnom Penh, or the tourist Siem Reap, many survive thanks to begging or selling all kinds of articles visitors foreigners.

Lonch Chhoeun clumsily walks with a homemade prosthesis made with a piece of aluminum that hides under his trousers so that nobody sees.

In Al, with little more than 20 years, stepped on a mine while struggled with Al Khmer red in the war civil that then fought against Al Government of Al general Lon Nol.

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“I heard the explosion and thought that he had been a partner.” “Then I saw my blood spattered leg and passed out,” says the robust man while he plays the deformed contours of your prosthesis.

After a brief stay in the hospital, returned to his home with his parents, in the province of Kandal, in the Centre of the country, and had to adapt to their disability to be able to find a job.

“I got a first wooden prosthesis, but cost me much walk with her.” “It was very awkward,” says the man who now earn the living fishing for his family.

Chhoeun, like many other victims of the mines, go to the rehabilitation centre of Phnom Penh’s Kien Khleang, funded by the NGO Veterans International Cambodia, one of the few that offers specialized assistance and prosthesis without any cost.

An orthopedics of middle leg, the most commonly used for the victims of mines, costs about $ 200, which means up to three months of salary in Cambodia.

In addition, prostheses must be changed every year and a half due to breakage or changes in the morphology of the patient, approximately, what is the cost out of reach of the majority of Cambodians.

Victims are also facing social rejection on the basis of disability, especially in rural communities where you live most of the amputees.

“Gradually there is a better understanding of what are disability and why occur, but still should be one greater awareness-raising work,” said Rithy Keo, director of the Center Kien Khleang.

29-Year-old Kom Somrath met the legacy of war who had lived his country when he stepped on a mine while he was looking for wood in the forest in his native province of Ratanakiri, northeast of the country.

The explosion shattered her left below-knee leg and had to spend several weeks in the hospital.

“I just think that I am even still alive.” “I have the luck,” says the young man who suffered the accident makes four years.

Somrath also goes to the Centre in Phnom Penh, while his house is over 360 kilometers, because it has no money to pay for the prosthesis and in his province, there is no care specialist.

“Now the work is much more difficult.” “Not me I can enter both in the forest, so I had to find other activities”, account.

Cambodia welcomes starting today and until 2 December, the meeting of States signatories or observers of the Convention on the prohibition of anti-personnel mines, also known as the Ottawa Treaty.

A total of 4.191 people died or were mutilated in 2010 because of anti-personnel mines throughout the world, 5 percent more than the previous year, according to a report of the international campaign for the prohibition of mines disclosed last week. EFE

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