23 years bed bound as a result of a Road Traffic Accident
By Chris Elliott…….
Last Friday I received a telephone call from the Ozanköy Mukhtar’s office asking me if I would like to go there to meet with some ladies who would be making a donation to the village.
So on Monday 17th April I went to the Ozanköy Mukhtar’s office and met with Margareta Linden from Sweden and Rannveig Ystaas from Norway who, together with their colleague Theresa Engfors from Sweden who runs the Mäklarringen Estate Agency, had decided to donate three wheelchairs to a worthy cause.
So what prompted a company to make such a nice gesture, well around two weeks ago they had a visit from a Turkish national asking for a donation to buy wheelchairs for distribution in Turkey and presented them with a newspaper which was promoting this cause.
Collectively they wanted to do this, but decided they would rather make a donation of wheelchairs to a TRNC village for distribution to local people in need.
Back now to Ozanköy and I sat and chatted to these two lovely ladies about their project and then we went with the Ozanköy Mukhtar, Mustafa Uzun to deliver the first wheelchair.
We arrived at the home of Fatma Akyulaf and we took the wheelchair into the bedroom where her 40 year old daughter Zuhre Akyulaf was laying in the bed and I was shocked to learn she had been run over by a vehicle when she was around 17 years of age. She suffered a broken leg and many other injuries including brain damage and was not expected to survive but she did and has been bed bound for the last 23 years and cared for by her mother.
For me this was a profound shock, more so as I am currently writing an article about Road Safety in Northern Cyprus and we hear in the news of many cases of people being killed in road accidents. A case like this really brings home to you the other horror of people’s lives being wrecked for ever by a road traffic accident.
