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Martina Abramovic Story

Heather met Martina in 1994 when she bought her first convoy to Croatia. She arranged for Bob Watts an eminent prosthesist from the UK to come to Croatia to make artificial limbs. Martina was one of the many amputee's that Bob and Heather helped. Martina is now 20 and Heather recently visited Martina in Croatia to help her get employement.

Martina was a specific case, for although she has had several operations, she just couldn’t get a perfect limb to fit. Then Heather came with Bob Watts and that changed Martina s life. At last she started to walk. The limb donated by Heather was just what she needed. She said in her interviews to Croatian papers that if it wasn’t for Heather, she probably wouldn’t be walking today. A lovely little girl from a small village saw Heather as her saviour.

Although Heather tried to get Martina’s address from the hospital to see what happened to Martina in the years to come, they couldn’t provide it. Then, at the beginning of 2007 Heather received an email from Martina. Martina had read in the papers that Heather was going through a divorce and decided that the least she could do to was to thank Heather and send her words of support. To her surprise, Heather answered straight away and was delighted to have a contact with Martina again. They emailed each other and then in November 2007, Heather came to Zagreb to visit Martina. They met after 13 years. Martina is now 20 and has grown into a charming young woman. They spent two wonderful days together. During that time, Heather had found out that Martina couldn’t get a job. According to the social welfare she wasn’t disabled enough to get any financial help and when she was looking for a job her disability became a problem. Only her father was employed in the family and they were in a quite difficult position. In order to help her better her chances of getting a job, Heather encouraged Martina to take an English course and kindly bought her the English language kit, Heather also commited to fund her private language lessons.
She also found out that Martina needed to undergo a revision amputation, just like she did a couple of years before. Heather contacted Dr. Jan Ertl a world known surgeon (famous Ertl method www.ertlreconstruction.com) who will later this year in 2008 visit Croatia to perform the surgery on Martina.
Martina’s Croatian surgeons (Dr. Živković and Dr.Muljačič) are delighted with the fact Dr Ertl will visit Croatia.

While Heather was in Croatia, although she tried to keep it a secret, she was recognised in one of the shops while buying a dress for Martina and the press followed her to the hotel. The Croatian press were all positive.

They started to write nice stories about Heather and Martina’s friendship and did a few interviews with Martina, writing about her difficult situation and problems she encountered in getting financial support from the State that she is entitled to by law. The result was that at the end of 2007, Martina was offered a job at EUROHERC an insurance company from SLavonski Brod (nearby her village, Sibinj) which she accepted.

Martina is over the moon, happy and grateful: Heather was her true guardian angel.

For further information on Croatia click here.

[Last Updated: 15th March 2008]