MUZAFFARABAD, Feb 1: Mohammad Rafique, 38, prepares to walk down the hill to catch the bus into the capital of Azad Jammu and Kashmir. At the end of the day, he will take the same bus back and reach his home after taking the same dirt track that he uses every morning.

Rafique lost both his legs in the Oct 8, 2005 earthquake after remaining trapped under a beam for almost two days until help reached him. “By then, it was too late,” he said.

“When doctors in Muzaffarabad saw my condition, they said they would have to amputate both my legs. I thought I would never walk again.” But he walks to and from Muzaffarabad each day with the help of prosthetic legs.

More than 2,000 children are reportedly waiting for prosthetic limbs, with finances and funding scarce and private charities providing most donations to help change the lives of individuals such as Rafique, reports IRIN, the UN’s information unit.

For weeks after the earthquake, the Pakistani media published or telecast a daily litany of suffering. Pictures of heavily bandaged survivors merged into even more stark images of children with amputated limbs staring blankly into space.

Almost a year-and-a-half later, with a second winter under way, rebuilding and reconstruction remains a daunting task, despite pledges of almost $7 billion in aid.

Rafique was helped by the Helping Hand for Relief and Development (HHRD), a US-based agency that, apart from involving itself in much-needed relief activities, has spearheaded efforts to provide prosthetic limbs to survivors.

As part of the recovery effort, aid workers guided Rafique through the process that required prosthetic legs to match his knees, and then lessons in how to put them on and take them off. Soon Rafique found he could walk again and within a fortnight, discovered he could resume work as well.

But while prosthetic limbs have enabled many quake survivors slowly to rebuild their lives, they are far from cheap and remain largely out of reach for local residents.—PPI