In pictures: Hope for Tanzania's albino attack survivors
- Published
Some witchdoctors in Tanzania say that potions and charms made from albino body parts are guaranteed to bring success. This has led businessmen, politicians and others to pay criminals to kill albino people and cut off their limbs. A group of children who survived attacks, but lost arms or legs, has just been given prosthetic limbs in the US.
Five-year-old Baraka Cosmas is now back in Tanzania after being fitted with a prosthetic arm.
He and four other children spent three months in the US having rehabilitation and getting used to their new limbs.
Twelve-year-old Mwigulu Matonage told the Reuters news agency that he wanted to be president one day, and he would condemn to death anyone who attacked a person with albinism - more than 80 have been killed since 2000.
When 13-year-old Emmanuel Festo was attacked, he lost some fingers on his right hand as well as part of his left arm. President Jakaya Kikwete has described the murders as an "evil" that has shamed Tanzania and has banned witchdoctors.
Fifteen-year-old Pendo Sengerema learnt how to use her new limb - and put it on - in the US. Treatment for the five children was funded by the Canada-based charity Under the Same Sun.
Pendo, along with the others, is now back in Tanzania and living in a safe place in the main city Dar es Salaam.
The children are now getting ready to go back to school. Albino people lack pigment in their skin and appear pale.
Emmanuel Rutema, 13, showed the BBC's Sammy Awami in Dar es Salaam how he can use his prosthetic limb to carry out everyday tasks.
Baraka is happiest running around inside and playing football outside, our reporter says.
- Published9 December 2014
- Published3 March 2015
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