A War Surgeon Talks about Landmines

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Dr Chris Giannou talks about helping victims of landmines and shares his feelings about these terrible weapons.

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"I have been a war surgeon for 17 years and I know that all war wounds are very bad. But there is something so terrible about landmine injuries that even after everything I have seen, I am still deeply shocked by them."

A LANDMINE is a mine hidden under ground that explodes when someone steps on it or drives over it

WOUNDS are injuries made by weapons

• Some mines explode when a person steps on them.
  They can tear off a person's foot or leg. The explosion is so strong that it forces bits of bone, metal, stones, even parts of the person's shoe to stick in their flesh. Sometimes the explosion is strong enough to kill a person immediately: if not, it is always necessary to amputate.
  
• Another kind of mine is filled with small pieces of metal.
  These mines usually have a wire attached to them. If someone walks into the wire, the mine explodes. The damage can be terrible. For example, the mine can shoot hundreds of steel balls in one direction: if you are close to it, the balls can tear your body to pieces and there will be nothing left.
  
• Injuries also happen when people move mines.
  This can be someone laying mines, or someone who is clearing mines and has an accident. But it can be civilians too.
  

  I think of Cambodia, where people bending over to plant rice have hit mines with their hands.

  Or the small, brightly coloured mines that children pick up to look at. Those mines don't have enough power to kill, but they can tear off a hand, or injure the child's fingers, face and eyes

AMPUTATE (v) cut off an arm or a leg for medical reasons

CIVILIAN: (n) a person who is not a soldier

The largest use of mines is in the countryside. The nearest hospital can be hundreds of kilometres away and there is often little transportation, so it may take as long as two weeks for an injured person to arrive at a hospital.

And there is another problem.

If two people are together, and one of them is injured by a mine, of course the other person runs over to help them. But the result is that the second person also runs into the minefield. Then you may have two injured people and no-one to get help.

It is probable that only half the people who are injured by mines ever get to a hospital. The others die, sometimes slowly and painfully, from infection or loss of blood.

MINEFIELD: a place where a lot of mines have been placed

Those people who do get to a hospital have usually lost a large amount of blood and their wounds are infected. The surgery that is necessary to amputate the limb of a landmine victim is very difficult and it takes a long time because there is so much dirt in the wounds. Landmine injuries often need several operations because of infections.

Many doctors, even military doctors from 'developed' countries, do not understand how bad land mine injuries are, so they may not remove all the dirt or damaged tissue.

INFECTED: (participle) full of dangerous bacteria. Infection = noun

LIMBS are arms or legs

An ARTIFICIAL LIMB is an arm or leg made in a factory to replace one that has been lost in an accident

Anyone can be killed or injured by a landmine. A soldier places a mine in a field and he doesn't know whether a friendly soldier, an enemy, a woman or a child is going to step on that mine. And landmines can kill years after they have been placed. They can even move.

In 1992 I was working in Somalia and I had to operate on a young girl. Every day, that girl went to a river in the centre of town to collect water. One day she went to the same place and she stepped on a mine.

What had happened?

In 1977, Somalia and Ethiopia had been at war. The mountains near the town had been mined. Fifteen years later, the rain had carried this small plastic mine down the hillside and along the river for 40 kilometres. It landed on the shore and the young girl stepped on it.

The military say, "We make maps of our minefields," but rain will fall and winds will blow, snow will melt and soil will be washed away. And mines will appear, years later, in places far from the minefields

The international community agrees that: it is not OK to use exploding bullets against soldiers; it is not OK to gas soldiers; it is not OK to infect soldiers with diseases.

"Yet we continue to tear people's limbs off with landmines. It seems to me that this is just as terrible as infecting or gassing someone."