Yoghurt container prostheses offer hope
Zoe Daniel
Sunday, March 18, 2012

ELIZABETH JACKSON: Thailand's Prosthesis Foundation has just set a new record for the donation of artificial limbs.

To mark the King of Thailand's 84th birthday, the foundation donated 884 prosthetic legs, the largest single donation ever made.

The milestone has been confirmed in the Guinness Book of Records and welcomed by the recipients, many of them poor farmers in Thailand and neighbouring countries.

Our Southeast Asia correspondent, Zoe Daniel, reports.

ZOE DANIEL: Prosthetic legs are expensive and for many who needed them in Thailand, they were once out of reach.

That's why the Prosthetics Foundation was set up, to provide light, economical and locally made legs for people who need them.

An inventive Thai orthopaedic surgeon came up with the method: melting old yoghurt drink bottles and recycling them by moulding them around aluminium tubes into plastic legs; bringing the cost down from $250 per patient to about $25.

Now specialist equipment and mobile teams allow them to be distributed all over Thailand and to neighbouring countries.

Tanya Kalkosol is a volunteer at the Foundation.

TANYA KALKOSOL: We have two kinds that we give for free. They can request from the two of it. One is specially made for working in field, you can walk in the water, you can even climb the trees with it, which is very light and water resistant.

And the other one is the normal, you know, the beautiful one that you can... It depends on the person. One people use it one year or one people can use it for 10 years. It's very different.

ZOE DANIEL: Many of those who make the limbs at specially set up clinics in remote areas are recipients themselves, trained by the foundation in the art of making and fitting the limbs.

Those who use them vary in age, gender and lifestyle, which generates demand for creative designs to match the personality of the recipient.

TANYA KALKOSOL: We are trying to have different projects. Like, this one that I'm going to create now is the fashionable prosthesis especially for kids.

So we're trying to get together kids from everywhere, no matter whatever you know, what is the nationality, the poor or not poor, to come together.

And there's this one finishing part, before you make it beautiful, before you put the skin colour; instead of skin colour we can have beads like crystal stuff, and we can have flowers. Even the one I made myself, not for myself, for people, I draw a pirate on it, for a boy. So he was very happy and that's what we looking for. Yeah, hoping that we have lots of cooperation coming in and lots of donations.

ZOE DANIEL: The Foundation has its hands full making legs for people, but occasionally branches out. Elephants who have stepped on landmines are now relatively common patients.

Tanya Kalkosol says the philosophy is that all creatures deserve to live a normal life.

TANYA KALKOSOL: If we have special requests like for elephants, which would be the biggest artificial legs we ever made. And also the smallest one for a bird, which is an eagle. So we try our best to provide them the best prosthesis so they can live normally.

ZOE DANIEL: The new record for donated prosthetic legs is the second set by the organisation.

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