By Michael Holden
LONDON (Reuters) – Prince Harry’s foundation is to donate $500,000 to projects including the World Health Organisation to help develop prosthetics and provide other support for children from Gaza and Ukraine, his office said on Wednesday.
The announcement came on the third day of the prince’s visit to Britain, where he visited the Centre for Injury Studies (CIS), part of Imperial College London, to learn more about its work, especially its focus on injuries suffered by children and those sustained in natural disasters.
“No single organization can solve this alone,” he said in a statement.
“Gaza now has the highest density of child amputees in the world and in history. It takes partnerships across government, science, medicine, humanitarian response and advocacy to ensure children survive and can recover after blast injuries.”
The CIS said children were seven times more likely to die from blast injuries than adults.
The three grants announced by Harry and his wife Meghan’s Archewell Foundation include $200,000 to the World Health Organization to support medical evacuations from Gaza to Jordan, and $150,000 to the Save the Children charity to provide ongoing humanitarian support in Gaza.
The third grant of $150,000 was to the Centre of Blast Injury Studies, part of CIS, to help its efforts to develop prostheses that can support injured children, particularly those injured from the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza.
The Duke of Sussex, 40, opened laboratories of the Centre for Blast Injury Studies in 2013.
Harry himself spent 10 years in the British military, during which he served two tours in Afghanistan, and he has made campaigning for veterans a priority, founding the Invictus Games for military personnel wounded in action.
NOT JUST THE MONEY
He was joined on Wednesday by WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus for a tour of the CIS, where he met with research teams working on a number of world-leading projects.
“I’m really pleased about what he’s doing, especially for the children of Gaza,” Ghebreyesus said. “It’s not the money, it’s also the passion and commitment I think I see.”
Showing him round was double leg amputee Dave Henson, a CIS ambassador, who has known Harry for more than a decade and was the first captain of the British Invictus team in 2014.
“It’s been hugely important for raising the profile of the centre,” Henson, who lost his legs in an explosion in Afghanistan in 2011, said of Harry’s involvement.
Harry, who now lives in California after stepping down from official royal duties in 2020, has spent the week visiting charities, including one in Nottingham, central England, where he announced a 1.1 million pounds ($1.49 million) donation to help young people in communities blighted by violence and knife crime.
However, in a sign of his estrangement from his family, much of the media focus of the trip has been on whether he will meet his father King Charles, whom he last saw 20 months ago, shortly after it was announced that the 76-year-old monarch was undergoing treatment for cancer.
(Reporting by Michael Holden; Editing by Kate Holton and Gareth Jones)
