After being wounded in an airstrike, 7-year-old Sawsan faces years of recovery

It was October 2024. Sawsan, then aged 6, was playing outside her home with friends when an airstrike hit her neighbourhood in the Beqaa Valley, eastern Lebanon. “I found her on the ground, unconscious,” says her mother, Rima. A piece of shrapnel had struck Sawsan’s head. For two months, Sawsan lay in a hospital bed, surrounded by monitors and IV lines. The injury had stolen her sight, hearing and voice. It left her unable to walk or even swallow.

Meanwhile, her parents struggled to repair the damage to their lives. The airstrike had displaced the family, and Sawsan’s father had lost his job. 

Although the initial treatment costs were covered by the government, Sawsan was released from the hospital as soon as she was deemed medically stable. “She had barely improved,” Rima remembers.

Sawsan still needed rehabilitation at home, including speech, eye and hearing therapies. Having missed nearly an entire year of school, she also needed tailored educational support. Her family, overwhelmed and under-resourced, struggled to meet her complex medical needs.

But a turning point came when, through UNICEF, Rima learned about a new programme specifically designed to support war-wounded children in Lebanon.

“That call changed everything,” Rima says. “They asked me to register Sawsan so that she could get the medical care she still needed. And so, we began again.”

With support from the Assistance & Care for War-Wounded and Affected Children (ACWA) programme, and through the work of dedicated doctors and specialists, Sawsan’s health began to improve. “She will never get back the months she lost,” Rima says, “but she has her laughter again. She has hope again. ACWA gave us that.”

ACWA, which means, ‘to be stronger’ in Arabic, is funded by the EU and was launched by Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health and UNICEF in March 2025.