Unique surgery by city docs helps UAE boy walk after 7 years

It took seven years, traveling to to two countries and finally a series of challenging surgeries by the city doctors here to make Rasheed Obaid Hassan Motawa from UAE stand up again after a fateful accident, and finally walk.
Rasheed met with a devastating bike accident in his home town of Fujairah on the east coast of United Arab Emirates (UAE) in November 2009, which left him paralysed with severe injuries in his brain, chest and legs.
"Rasheed was only 16-years-old and studying when the accident happened. He had a memory loss and lost his ability to speak which eventually hampered his education," Hassan's father Obaid Hassan Motawa said.

He (Rasheed) was riding the bike with his friend as pillion rider, when a truck hit them from the rear, he said.
"His friend died on the spot, but Rasheed survived miraculously though he turned into a vegetable," he added.
Visits to several hospitals in UAE, however, failed to deliver any fruitful results for the then class XI student.

It was almost five years that Rasheed was lying on bed as his entire left side was paralysed with the hip-joint and ankle of his left leg being totally damaged.
"His education was stopped and we had no clue what to do. Then on the suggestion of one of our family friends, we decided to take him to Thailand," Obaid said.

In Thailand, doctors tried twice to reconstruct the damaged thigh and ankle, but nothing helped his cause.
Rasheed underwent six surgeries in total, but remained the same. The doctors in the UAE and Thailand never gave us hope that he would be able to walk again, Obaid, who runs a steel manufacturing factory in UAE, said.
One day one of my employees, who is a Bengali, suggested us to bring Rasheed to Kolkata where Apollo Gleneagles Hospital's Orthopaedic and Reconstructive unit has the facilities to treat him, the father said, adding he brought his youngest son to the city in October 2015.

"There were many challenges. Rasheed had a deformed
hip-joint with old metal screws, a deformed and scarred thigh and leg, completely flail knee, ankle and foot. Not only these, but the main nerve of his left leg was also not functional," Kar told