Local Rehabilitation in Rural Bangladesh
Prosthetics Outreach Foundation has been working in Bangladesh since 2000. Partnering with the Nalta Hospital in rural southwestern Bangladesh, POC establish a Physical Rehabilitation Center, which opened in the fall of 2002. The center provides both prosthetic and orthotic care to amputees and others with limb deformities.
Living and working in Bangladesh is fraught with danger. Overloaded trucks, buses, and passenger cars share narrow roads with ox-drawn wagons, push carts, and pedestrians. Collisions are frequent, and many limbs and lives are lost. Farming and other work equipment tends to be old-fashioned and few safety rules are observed, resulting in frequent injuries and severed limbs. Infections of wounds are common, especially in remote areas. In the absence of antibiotic drugs, amputations are often the last line of defense to save a person’s life.
We have partnered with the Nalta Hospital to bring prosthetic and orthotic care to an estimated 15 million people in southwest Bangladesh, who have no access to these services.
Local prosthetists fabricate and fit custom-made, lightweight prostheses to amputees and provide orthopedic devices for those with limb deformities. Materials and components are partially made in Bangladesh and partially imported from Vietnam (see POF’s Vietnam Component Manufacturing program). To achieve long-term stability, we help center staff identify local suppliers and encourage local component manufacturing.
In 2009, POF partnered with Glencoe Foundation to launch Walk For Life, a national campaign to treat children with clubfoot during their first two years of life. If left untreated, clubfoot gradually robs children of their ability to walk normally as one or both feet turn inward and, in severe cases, backward. Using a series of inexpensive castings and subsequent bracing (Ponseti Method), the children’s feet are corrected and lifelong disability avoided. POF works with Walk For Life to train local medical personnel in the Ponseti Method and support the provision of direct clinical services for children with clubfoot.
