Gloria Abeka, is a 12 year old girl from Accra, Ghana. She has Blount’s disease which caused her legs to bend inwards below the knee… making her dependent upon a wheelchair. She has never been able to stand, walk, or play with her friends. After a charity appeal, Vel Sakthivel, an orthopaedic surgeon at Southampton Children’s Hospital, offered to operate. He was forced to break each of her legs in three places so as to reshape them.
Gloria, pictured with her mother, Mercy Yeboah (right) will spend more than eight months in the UK recovering from the operations to correct her bowed legs, which also involved pinning them with 22 screws. She is now able to sit and stand and she will soon be able to walk and play with friends for the first time. Gloria said the doctors who helped her have changed her life.
