By David Josar, Stuttgart bureau

The U.S. European Command will help coordinate the distribution of 240 wheelchairs being donated next week to the Red Cross and other charities throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The first wheelchairs were given out Tuesday at a ceremony in Sarajevo attended by EUCOM Commander in Chief U.S. Air Force Gen. Joseph W. Ralston, U.S. ambassador Thomas Miller, Dr. Midhat Haraci, president of the Bosnia and Herzegovina Society of the Red Cross, and Ken Behring, founder of the Wheelchair Foundation and owner of the Seattle Seahawks.

The Wheelchair Foundation, a non-profit agency based in California, raised the money for the wheelchairs, and, earlier this month, transported them to Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Karen Williams, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo, said the wheelchairs are needed because people in the country are routinely injured by the more than one million undetonated land mines that remain in open fields and along roads.

One person a month is maimed by one of the unexploded devices, she said.

According to the Bosnia and Herzegovina Society of the Red Cross, about 20,000 people in the country are paraplegics, many injured by landmines.

Several families received the wheelchairs at a presentation ceremony Sarajevo’s Zetra Arena, Williams said, and about 50 more wheelchairs were to be distributed in the area throughout the day.

Williams said the rest will distributed around the country over the following few days.

The Wheelchair Foundation, formed by Behring in 2000, has pledged to distribute one million wheelchairs over the next five years to people who cannot afford one.

The embassy’s Office of Defense Cooperation worked with the U.S. European Command to find non-governmental organizations, including the Red Cross, to distribute the wheelchairs.

"Wheelchairs may seem like such a basic piece of medical equipment, but here it’s often a luxury," said Dr. Haris Hadziavdagic, who works in several hospital emergency rooms around Sarajevo. "Losing a limb is horrible and making it worst is not having something like a wheelchair that can make the recovery easier."