After 13 years of vision loss, a corneal transplant surgery performed on Ibrahim Abbasi, 59, has helped him recover sight in one eye, said Dr Alireza Raminkhu, deputy director of health and treatment office of Khane-e-Isargaran (a department that provides services to war veterans).
The former combatant’s left eye will return to normalcy soon; however, he has no vision in the right eye, IRNA quoted him as saying.
Abbasi who lives in the border province of Kermanshah, lost his arms and an eye in a mine explosion in 2002. His legs were also severely damaged, Raminkhu said.
Millions of mines, planted during the war litter the country’s border regions and still pose a threat to people’s lives in parts of the western and southern areas. Annually, hundreds are maimed in undetected mine explosions.
Iran has cleared 60% of the mines but there are still an estimated 16 million mines along the Iraq border which cause many casualties every year, even though the general location of the minefields is well known and many of the mines are in sparsely populated areas.
Tehran is in the process of recruiting more technicians to increase the pace of clearing old mines along the border with the Arab country and has urged Baghdad to cooperate.
The Iraqi-imposed war killed a million people on both sides. After the bloody conflict ended Iran informed the United Nations that the war inflicted $1,000 billion in economic loss on the Islamic Republic.
