Injury date: 1984
Injuries: White phosphorous grenade explosion set off while farming: deep scar tissue neglect fused calf to thigh muscles; complete loss of mobility.
CPI Assistance: Multiple complex revisive surgeries, assistive devices, family nutritional assistance and physical rehabilitation.

When Ha was 3, the young ethnic Bru woman was severely burned when her mother accidentally set off a white phosphorous grenade while farming with her daughter near Bang, her remote village on Vietnam’s border with Laos in Quang Binh Province.

No one has been able to reconstruct what actually happened that day, but the story that the scars and the trauma tell is horrific. Ha's mother suffered burns on her face, hands, arms, and chest. The skin on Ha's young legs was burned off and her muscles underneath severely injured. The rudimentary health care that the family received did nothing but ensure infection didn't invade their burns.

Because she never received treatment to release her scar tissue, her limbs did not grow normally and part of her calf fused with her thigh, forcing her to get around on her knees. The top of Ha's left foot eventually fused to the front of her left shin. As she learned to walk on her knees, her leg muscles and tendons atrophied quickly with misuse. Because of the abnormal stress and weight, her knee joints also deteriorated, warping the natural hinge shape of the joint and erasing any cartilage at the ends of her young bones.

Her mother died six years after the accident, while giving birth to one of Ha's siblings. Not long after the death of their mother, their father died of a complicated illness, and the eight children became orphans.

During the summer of 2002, Ha’s name appeared on a list of children previously injured by UXO or landmines in Quang Binh province. These children were officially eligible for participation in one of CPI's Medical Assessments. The children attending the afternoon session were provided lunch, but Ha refused to eat it -- she wanted to save it for brothers and sisters at home.

Ha had been taking care of her 4 younger siblings, on her knees, since the death of her parents.

Ha was selected as one of the 15 children that could be provided life-altering services on behalf of CPI. When CPI conducted the first visit to Ha’s home in June of 2003, our staff discovered that the family was living considerably below the poverty line, as Ha's mobility was so severely limited, and could do very little farming. A CPI family stabilization grant was provided to support Ha’s younger siblings while she left for treatment.

In August 2003, Ha was transported to the Da Nang Orthopedics & Rehabilitation Center (DNORC) for her final assessment. The physicians sent her to Da Nang General Hospital for a series of four different operations on her legs and feet. It was, and has been, a long and painful process, as each operation lengthened the atrophied tendons and muscles in her folded legs, separated her foot from her shin, and reconstructed the bone structure in her foot and of her knee joints.

Ha’s first three operations at Da Nang General went very well, and she was transferred back to DNORC for therapy. At the age of 22, on this stint at DNORC, she told her doctors that she didn't want to go home until she could walk on her own -- without crutches.

In December 2004, Ha returned to her village for a couple months to integrate back into village and family life. She is now able to walk, with little assistance from her crutches. There is a good chance, however, that she will head back to Da Nang in the spring of 2005 to visit an American doctor who may be able to perform her last surgery, enabling her to walk more upright.

What Ha still needs: Continued physical therapy, family nutritional support and, eventually an opportunity to learn a vocational skill.