The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Velugu to partner with Mobility India

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jul 09, 2004

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Velugu to partner with Mobility India

By Ravi Reddy

NIZAMABAD, JULY 8. The Andhra Pradesh Rural Poverty Reduction Project (APRPRP), also known as the Velugu project, is all set to join hands with Mobility India, a premier Bangalore-based organisation with a professional team to establish the first orthotic and prosthetic unit in a district in Andhra Pradesh.

A decision regarding the establishment of the orthotic and prosthetic centre was taken after a visit by a two-member Mobility India team led by its executive director, Michael Sanjeevi, and Orthotic and Prosthetic engineer, Soikat Ghosh, to the district headquarters. The two senior representatives of Mobility India met the Velugu Project Director, K.V.Satyanarayana, the Disabled Welfare Assistant Director, Prasada Rao, and District Project Manager, C.A.R.Sudhir, and other officials working on the disabled welfare project.

The idea behind the exposure visit of the Mobility India team was to give them an orientation on the Velugu interventions in the rehabilitation of the disabled and their partnerships with the project in ensuring quality services in the field of rehabilitating persons with locomotor disability. The Velugu project is all set to enter into a partnership with Mobility India, which incidentally would be the first such venture by a private organisation to tie up with a Government agency to take up rehabilitation programme in Andhra Pradesh.

Mobility India executive director, Michael Sanjeevi, said that their organisation is ready to support the proposed project through various interventions. It would enable the Velugu authorities to establish the orthotic and prosthetic unit at the district headquarters more preferably in the District Headquarters Hospital.

It would train local sponsored youth in orthotics and prosthetics and regularly depute its trained technical staff from Bangalore till such time the local youth are trained to handle the work.

Mobility India representatives would visit the unit once a month and follow up the work done by ensuring quality services and on job training to the staff. The organisation has agreed to train carpenters in making special seats and walking aids and train cobblers in maintaining and repairing orthotic and prosthetic aids.

Mr. Sudhir said that the district headquarters hospital was the right place for establishment of the workshop.

He said the place would be ideal, feasible and accessible to provide all services under one roof. Patients affected with polio, amputees, hemiplegic, stroke patients, accident victims, patients with spinal chord injuries, children with club foot, cerebral palsy patients, muscular dystrophy clients, children with congenital deformities and all patients undergoing orthopaedic surgeries could use the facilities at the proposed centre.

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