Shah Mohammed (25), at the ICRC’s orthopaedic centre in Kabul in October 2008, learning to walk again after both of his legs were amputated below the knees.

A former policeman, Shah stepped on a landmine whilst patrolling a town in Paktika, south-east of Kabul.

25-year-old Mohammed Said Ashraf is the orthopaedic centre’s junior administrator. At the tender age of eight, Said lost the use of both legs when his spinal cord was shattered by shrapnel during a rocket attack near his home. In addition to orthopaedic and physiotherapy help from the ICRC, Said benefited from its home schooling programme, which enabled him to make up for the five years of schooling he had lost whilst bedridden.