Burns and war-related traumas

by Luca Catalano Gonzaga

In Iraq, the war began in 1980 and since then it has never ended. Starting with the confrontation with Iran, then Kuwait, then the Gulf conflict in 1990, the independence of Kurdistan, the American invasion of 2003, the explosion of domestic terrorism, the embargo, the creation of Al Qaeda, and finally, the rise of the Caliphate in the northern part of the country. To pay the price of this decade of destabilisation are the civilians, who live in frustration, betrayed by the promises, tired of believing that things might eventually change. If the older generation is losing its memory, new generations cannot even imagine peace. As in Nasiriyah, a city located in southern Iraq, where children are the ones being sacrificed by a global system of insecurity and poor health care. The portraits show their faces before entering the operating room, all marked by deformities of the body and facial burns caused by domestic accidents (exposed electrical wires, gas and fuel oil tanks for cooking) or even worse, by unexploded ordnance still scattered across the country. The story “Burns and war-related traumas” by Luca Catalano Gonzaga tells the stories of women and children who have had the opportunity to be operated on thanks to the surgical treatment of the NGO Emergenza Sorrisi. (text by Luca Catalano Gonzaga).