Valeria Adzo Adzatia is a female amputee with over 20 years of lived experience who has turned personal struggle into a powerful national mission for amputee rehabilitation and empowerment in Ghana.

Impact & Achievements

Recognizing that life after amputation is emotionally devastating, especially in systems where psychosocial care is rarely integrated into medical treatment, she founded Smiles of Hope, an organisation dedicated to peer counselling, emotional rehabilitation, and community reintegration for amputees.

Under her leadership, Valeria has organised over 100 peer-support programs in Accra and Nsawam, directly supporting more than 500 amputees and their caregivers. She leads a team of 11 trained Amputee Peer Counsellors who work with major referral hospitals such as Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, 37 Military Hospital, Greater Accra Regional Hospital (Ridge), and Tema General Hospital to provide structured support before, during, and after amputation.

Through six major amputee symposia, she has reached over 1,000 participants, raising awareness about prosthetic rehabilitation, mental health, disability rights, physiotherapy, and healthy living after limb loss. To date, Smiles of Hope has extended emotional support, education, and renewed hope to more than 2,000 amputees and caregivers.

What makes Valeria’s work especially powerful is that it is rooted in lived experience: she does not simply advocate for amputees; she walks alongside them in their most vulnerable moments, showing that life after amputation is not an end, but the beginning of a new chapter filled with dignity and possibility.