Orthopaedic centre appeals for more support

THE Orthopaedic Training Centre at Adoagyiri in the Eastern Region attends to more than 6000 patients annually and majority of them are victims of road and industrial accidents.
The increasing numbers continue to raise concerns about the apparent failure of industries to institute measures to protect their employees against industrial accidents and the country’s failure to contain road accidents.
The authorities at the centre have particularly expressed worry about the high cost of artificial arms, which are currently on high demand, coupled with the fact that the centre produced about 100 artificial legs annually.
A Co-director of the centre, Sister Elizabeth Newman, in an interview with the Daily Graphic, expressed regret that accident victims were not paid compensations for injuries sustained, resulting in further financial burdens on them.
Questioning the rationale for the importation of artificial legs into the country by some individuals at high a cost, Sister Newman stated that the centre had what it took to produce the same quality of artificial legs produced abroad and that the only item it imported into the country was artificial arms from Germany, which were more expensive.
The centre was founded in 1961 by a Dutch national, Brother Tarcisius de Ruyter, and runs three departments — an orthopaedic workshop for the production of orthopaedic materials, a mobile orthopaedic unit that travels to every region in the country to attend to patients and a children’s home, where facilities are provided for those who need intensive therapy and for children who are severely handicapped that their parents cannot cope with their training and rehabilitation.
Sister Newman said the workshop was set up to provide for the manufacture of orthopaedic shoes, leg braces, shoe prosthesis and artificial limbs while the mobile unit travelled to the regions on a regular basis to bring its services to the physically challenged.
She added that the mobile unit team attended to 3,455 patients in 2009, which involved travelling long distances to prevent patients with financial difficulties from embarking on long journeys to treatment centres.
Asked how the centre sustained itself financially, Sister Newman lamented that both the contributions from elsewhere to the centre and those made by patients for their orthopaedic devices had decreased.
“The orthopaedic devices are heavily subsidised but even the amount being demanded is difficult for many patients to pay,” she said.