Helping hands: Narendra Nath and K. D. Shetty, explaining about the lightweight calliper project at NIMS in Hyderabad on Thursday. Photo: K. RAMESH BABU

HYDERABAD: This nondescript workshop in a far-flung corner of the Nizam's Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS) is not an ordinary one by any means.

The euphoria over a Padmashri for its principal investigator, L. Narendra Nath, has settled, and the Prosthetic and Orthotic Workshop at NIMS, popular for its Floor Reaction Orthosis (FRO) Lightweight calliper project, is back to the daily grind.

Over 6,000 people, most of them crippled by polio in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, have so far been helped to take a firm step forward with the lightweight callipers. And now the project, conceptualised by the President, A.P.J Abdul Kalam, to use altered missile radar dome material for polio callipers that are 15 times lighter than traditional ones, is widening its horizon.

The last eight months saw Dr. Nath and the engineer-in-charge of the project, K.D. Shetty, and their teams helping over 1,700 persons in Mahbubnagar and Belgaum. The next destinations are Nalgonda and the tsunami-ravaged Nagapattinam district of Tamil Nadu. The Sri Lankan Government has also evinced interest in the calliper, for which logistics are being worked out, Dr. Nath informs.

"The project is now not just an FRO project, though it was essentially derived from that concept. The ground reality through trials, errors, continuing returns to the basic drawing board and a few setbacks over 10 years, has changed the project a lot, and brought it closer to what Dr. Kalam actually wanted - to help the poor," Dr. Nath says.

One major thrust for the project is expected from the team's effort to make a knee joint that extends the calliper to the thigh for more support for the leg and help more polio patients. The drawings are ready. However, progress through technical support and financial backing is protracted. The project, which is not commercial in nature, is apparently not getting the due it deserves and in fact there is some indifference from Government bodies who were initially with the project, before backing out slowly. The fact that the project was good enough for a Padmashri is yet to change mindsets in those quarters.

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