Amputees in Gaza have provided easy-to-assemble artificial limbs using UK technology

Standing between two bars set up in a mobile clinic in Rafah, south of Gaza, Rizeq Tafish is focused as he takes his first exercise steps in four months.

“My feelings before were sadness and despair. Now I feel happy and free,” he says, laughing afterwards.

Rizeq is one of the first of thousands of injured Palestinians to receive transplants from Jordanian doctors using modern British technology.

Warning: This report contains graphic details of injuries

Exiled to Rafah, he was injured by an Israeli tank fire while leaving Friday prayers in June. With his leg amputated, the blacksmith could no longer work and was in despair.

“I lost my whole life: my job and my hope,” said Rizeq. “There was no one to take care of my wife and child. I even needed help to use the toilet.”

The human cost of Israel’s devastating year-long war in Gaza is measured not just in lives lost but in lives changed forever.

After analyzing emergency medical data, the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that at least 94,000 people were injured. More than 24,000 people – one in 100 Gazans – have life-changing injuries. These include severe burns, head and spinal cord injuries and amputations.

At the same time, it has become almost impossible to leave Gaza for treatment and only 16 of the 36 hospitals are functioning. Correctional services have been severely disrupted. The WHO says only 12% of the equipment needed by injured people – such as wheelchairs and crutches – is available.

The Jordanian system uses new prosthetics from two British firms, Koalaa and Amparo. They have easy-to-install sockets and a new direct molding method for lower limbs, avoiding months of waiting and multiple installations.

“This is a new type of artificial organ. Its main feature is fast production. It means that it will be ready for the patient within one to two hours,” explained the Jordanian army doctor, Lt Abdullah Hamada, who expertly fitted Rizeq’s leg.

His team of doctors has helped dozens of amputees. Each transplant costs about $1,400 (£1,100), with funding from the Jordanian state and a national charity.

All installations are digitally registered allowing for remote monitoring and tracking processes.

If it is safe enough, the plan is for two Jordanian mobile units to move around. There is a high demand for prostheses throughout Gaza among people of all ages.

At al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza, sisters Hanan and Misk al-Doubri are so small that they fit in one wheelchair. Last month, they lost their mother and their legs in an Israeli air strike on their home in Deir al-Balah.

Misk, 18 months old, had just learned to walk. Now he struggles to stand on his one good foot. But Hanani, who is three years old, has a serious injury; he was blown up in his family’s apartment on the first floor.

“We try to distract him, but he always goes back to asking about his mother,” said his aunt, Sheifa. Then he asked, ‘Where are my legs?’ I don’t know what to tell him.”

I asked the Israeli military why the al-Doubris were targeted but could not get an answer.

Locals believe that the girls’ father, who is a police officer, may be in the intensive care unit. Israel has attacked many people who were working for the security forces in Gaza controlled by Hamas.

As Israeli planes fly overhead, 15-year-old Diya al-Adini surveys the destruction of her home in Deir al-Balah. Around his neck he always wears his prized possession, bought for months of savings: a digital camera.

However, he can no longer use it without help: he has no arms.

In August, Diya was playing a computer game in a coffee shop when Israel bombed it.

“The speed of the rocket made it difficult for me to react. After the beating, I fainted for a few seconds,” Diya recalled. “When I arrived, everything was white. It was like watching a movie. I tried to get up, but I couldn’t move at all; I had no hands to help me.”

Diya loved to swim and walk her dogs, do some things on her bike and take pictures of places. Now he relies on his older sister, Aya, to take pictures for him. But he is determined to be sure.

“I’m trying to plan a good future so that when I get prosthetics, I can work hard and become a famous photographer,” he said. “I need my limbs to go back to my pictures, and to everything I loved.”

Walking the bumpy road to the tent camp he now calls home, Rizeq Tafish was given crutches to help him get used to his new prosthetic leg.

“I want to forget the time I had legs and start from scratch. I still consider myself a complete and perfect person,” he told a local BBC reporter in Gaza.

“I can go back to my job or find a different one now that I have my new organ. Getting my leg back gives me back my smile that I want to share with everyone.”

But there are tears of joy and smiles when he reaches his family. Rizeq’s mother just falters looking forward without getting help to hug him and his wife praising God as she stands holding their little boy.

Rizeq is just one of many in Gaza who are learning to deal with a terrible new disability but he has taken steps to get his life back.