African Albino Children Who Lost Their Limbs To Witchcraft Poachers Offered Free Prosthesis By North American Charities
In Tanzania, having albinism means living in constant danger of having your limbs chopped off and sold to witch doctors. While the government is working to stop these atrocities, U.S. charity The Global Medical Relief Fund is working to help those already affected regain the limbs they lost.
Albinism is a genetic disorder that affects an individual's ability to produce melanin, a natural substance that gives your skin, hair, and eyes their color. In small communities throughout Africa, however, the condition is still believed to bring about magical powers. This June, five African children who had their limbs butchered off by body poachers were given the opportunity to travel to America to receive new prostheses, free of charge.
They're not getting their arm back," Elissa Montanti, founder of The Global Medical Relief Fund, told the Associated Press, "but they are getting something that is going help them lead a productive life and be part of society and not be looked upon as a freak or that they are less than whole."
Around one in every 1,200 children are born with albinism, but in Tanzania the the condition is much more common than the rest of the world. Around every one in 1,400 Tanzanians carry the albino gene, compared with only around one in every 20,000 in the rest of the world. Last year, Tanzania banned witch doctors in an effort to curb the attacks, but according to AP there has been a sharp increase in attacks in Tanzania and Malawi, with at least eight attacks recorded in Tanzania in the past year. Since 2006, around 100 people with albinism have been hunted down and attacked in Tanzania and 71 have been killed.
Seventeen-year-old Kabula Nkarango Masanja told the AP that when her family had no money or good to offer a band of thieves who broke into her house in the middle of the night, they hacked off her back with three swipes of a machete.
"I feel bad because I still don't know what they did with my arm, where it is, what benefits they derived from it — or if they simply dumped it," Masanja said.
Moved by a story she had read of 5-year-old Baraka Lumsaba, who had his hand hacked off in the middle of the night by an armed gang that broke into his house, Montanti got in touch with Under the Same Sun, a Canadian charity that advocates and protects individuals with albinism, to offer her help with the situation. The charity asked if Montanti could house and care for five children while they got fitted with prosthetic limbs at the Philadelphia Shriners Hospital for Children in Pennsylvania. Montanti agreed, and this June the children were flown to New York to live with Montanti on Staten Island.
Once in New York, the children were able to take in all the sites of the Big Apple and even go in a swimming pool for the first time in their lives. They will be sent back to Tanzania once they have learned to use their limbs correctly.