Bulletin

Issue: March 2004

News

HELPING AMPUTEES IN GUJARAT

International organisations have called upon the expertise of La Trobe University's National Centre for Prosthetics and Orthotics to ensure the success of a program to help amputee victims of a massive earthquake in India.

On January 26, 2001, thousands died when a gigantic earthquake devastated the Kutch region of the State of Gujarat.

A number of local and international organisations, including the French NGO Handicap International (HI), provided orthopaedic and other care to survivors-many of whom had lost limbs.

After hundreds of victims were fitted with prostheses-artificial limbs and other body parts-a need arose to evaluate the efficiency of the prosthetic fittings and their long term personal and social effect. In order to ensure that victims continued to receive maximum care, HI, with the financial assistance of the American Joint Jewish Distribution Committee, called on the National Centre for Prosthetics and Orthotics staff for help.

In August 2003, Mr Wesley Pryor, an associate lecturer with the Centre and La Trobe PhD student, went to Delhi where he conducted training sessions in research methods for HI staff and then to Bhuj, the capital of Gujarat.

Mr Pryor and HI staff selected 10 of the more than 400 amputees and conducted a pilot study on them with a view of analysing three variables. These were the satisfaction of the victims with their prostheses, whether the amputee was physically functional with the prosthesis, and to what extent there was compliance-how often the amputee wore the prostheses.

'Once I left, the local staff- in collaboration with intern students from an Indian Prothetics and Orthotics school called Nirtar-then collected data from a further 86 people. I analysed this data in Australia, giving us a total sample of nearer 100.

'We called the project PEGASUS (Post Earthquake Gujarat Amputee Survey of User Satisfaction)', Mr Pryor said.

'Most amputees found their prostheses were beneficial according to our definition but we were disturbed by our finding that about one third of amputees had been fitted with unacceptable or barely acceptable prostheses.'

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