Svētdiena, 18. decembris, 2022
In the Riga East Clinical University Hospital (RAKUS), assistance was provided to a teenager who was most likely injured by a cluster bomb during the war in Ukraine, rus.tvnet.lv reports, citing the Panorama broadcast of Latvian television.
The use of such munitions is prohibited, as their purpose is to cause the most extensive and severe damage to civilians. The teenager was in incredible pain as the foil plate severed his shoulder nerves, paralyzing his right arm.
The leading specialist in peripheral nerve surgery at the Center for Microsurgery, Mārtiņš Kapickis, points out that “this is something unbelievable.”
“Until now, we have not had a single child with a gunshot wound,” – he said, talking about the operated teenager, who in the structure of his body was still like a little boy.
The teenager and his mother did not agree to a conversation with LTV, especially after the experience in Russia in the humanitarian corridor for refugees.
“He is glad that he is being taken care of and is being helped. Since at the first stage the wound was washed and sewn up. This is normal, absolutely normal. It was on the border, on the Ukrainian border,” Kapitskis said.
The boy was wounded in the throat in Ukraine on March 2. Nerve damage hurts much more than a fracture. Two months full of pain followed, until the boy got to Latvia and a normal family doctor. It was the doctors who sent the boy to Mārtiņš Kapickis. “The most painful thing that can be in the human body. Anyone who has a toothache understands what it means. And this is only a thousandth part. Wild pain. When I first met him, it was not with him it was possible to communicate precisely because of the pain,” said the microsurgeon.
