CoRSu Rehabilitation Hospital in Uganda is an orthopaedic unit which primarily treats children and young adults who have various forms of disability and is one of Legs4Africa’s much valued partners.

Thanks to the generosity of young amputees in the UK, Legs4Africa are able to send donated prosthetic legs to hospitals in Africa such as CoRSU where the impact on children’s lives there is life changing as Brian’s story below illustrates so well.  

10 year old Brian had dreams of becoming a driver when he grows up but the challenges to  him attaining his goal seemed insurmountable.

Brian was born in a hospital in Western Uganda but when he was a few months old, the family noticed his right leg was shorter than the left.  He was taken back to the hospital where the doctors discovered his right leg did not have an ankle joint so they referred him to CoRSU. As he grew and started walking, Brian used crutches to help maintain his balance but whenever he became tired of them he would abandon the crutches and resort to crawling, painfully, on the hard surfaces.

 Like any other child with a disability, Brian faced difficulty interacting with his peers and he wasn’t able to make friends.  Children would refer to him as a ‘Mulema’ which is a derogatory word in the local Luganda language meaning ‘a lame person’. Obviously, this made him feel even more excluded and affected him greatly.  His disability also meant that he was unable to share in most of the household chores and assignments, further undermining his confidence and happiness.

Brian’s grandmother, Medias, spent hours comforting him and trying to keep his spirits up.  She couldn’t afford to buy a prosthetic leg for Brian but she never gave up hope or stopped praying that a good Samaritan would eventually appear to help them out of their difficulty.

Then out of the blue one morning Medias received a phone call from CoRSU inviting Brian to attend the clinic to be assessed for one of the limbs that had been donated through Legs4Africa.  At CoRSU Brian met other young amputees like himself to make friends and play with. And, when he was finally fitted with his new leg, his first comment was ‘I have two legs now and I will grow to achieve my dream of becoming a driver’.  

www.corsuhospital.org