Aid worker who rescued dying child shares story behind this powerful image

When Anja Ringgren Loven offered a severely malnourished toddler a sip of her water and a biscuit she would never have guessed how the powerful image would touch the hearts of people all over the world.

"I was not aware that the picture of me giving Hope water was going to go viral and go crazy all over the world. It was a big shock for all of us," the Danish aid worker told the BBC about the emotive moment in January.

"People were crying, people could not even look at the picture. It was so terrible. It was like it was a wake-up call for Europeans or the Western world."

This is the image that broke hearts around the world:

The starved little boy did a desperate dance

The Nigerian boy had been abandoned by his family after he was accused of being a witch and had survived on only scraps for an astounding eight months.

Despite being riddled with worms, the starving boy, with a skeletal frame, started to do a little dance as soon as he saw the foreign aid workers.

“I think that was his way of reaching out for help."

The aid workers received a tip-off about his deteriorating state when a man from the village called the centre.

Anja and her crew pretended to be missionaries looking for dog meat to buy so that they didn’t let on that they knew about the boy who was deemed as evil.

"I know that some of these villagers they have been looking at him with tears in their eyes but they have not had any chance to do anything because they have been afraid of helping a child who has been accused of being a witch, because it can affect them and even their own children," she said.

"Even though people they outcast the child it does not mean they want you take it. You need to somehow get a feeling of, 'do they want us to take or not?' and so I just started by saying can I give him some water? And he said, 'yeah, yeah please give him, he's thirsty, he's hungry'."

"Let's get the hell out of here," were the words Anja muttered before they jumped in the bus and drove off with the gravely ill boy. Source: Facebook

'I was so surprised that he could stand up'

Anja was appalled when she first saw the heartbreaking state of the young boy.

“He was like a skeleton and I was even surprised that he was breathing. And I was so surprised that he could stand up," she says.

“I bent down and I gave him the water and my biscuit and people were laughing and cheering and I took him in a blanket, and said 'Let's get the hell out of here'", she recalls as she carried the feeble little boy onto the bus and drove off.

'I was just thinking where to bury this boy'

The fact that little Hope, as Anja affectionately named him, is alive and very healthy today is an absolute miracle – and no one was more surprised than Anja herself.

"In the car, that's when I now decided to call him Hope," she said.

"Because the breathing was so heavy and you could see all his bones and I was just thinking where to bury this boy. I was so sure he was going to die."

'He is a very strong little boy'

Fortunately, Anja didn’t have to follow through with the unbearable task of digging his grave as little Hope proved to be the most incredible trooper, thanks to the help of an overwhelming reaction to the photo that reached every corner of the globe.

In just a matter of months, people donated millions of dollars which helped him make the most phenomenal transformation.

Hope now faces a much happier, healthier and safer future growing up in an orphanage where Anja says he enjoys the company of "35 brothers and sisters".

"He is very, very fine. He is a very strong little boy," Anja says.

"We think he must be three-years-old and he's very big now. He's gained a lot of weight. And he will start nursery school next month."