Keeping Australia Alive

21 Mar 2016

This episode of Keeping Australia Alive features our Group Leader, Professor Roy Kimble and a brave young girl, named Masoumeh.

Masoumeh and her family are United Nations refugees from Afghanistan.

One day, while living at a refugee camp in northern Iran, a fire destroyed their house and killed both her father and brother.

Masoumeh was severely burned in the fire and received some basic treatment at a local hospital, but her family had no money, so she was sent home after a week.

Now in Australia, she is being treated by Professor Roy Kimble, the director of paediatric surgery at Brisbane's Lady Cilento Hospital.

Over the past two years, she has undergone more than 30 operations.

She is hoping to get her driving licence soon, but her hands are severely deformed and cannot grip the wheel.

Professor Kimble successfully performed reconstructive surgery to allow Masoumeh to move her thumb more freely.

"I'm fully confident she'll be able to drive a car with these hands," he said.

"Of course when she came to us originally she couldn't, she wouldn't [have] even been able to eat with [those] hands."

 

 

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