SEVEN members of the Western Disabled People’s Association have been given a new lease on life by the Hope Centre in Nadi where they were given new prosthetic limbs.
The centre has been assisting amputees for the past three years with the latest group receiving a boost from the Australian government.
Hope Centre chairman Sanjit Patel said Fiji’s growing number of diabetic patients called for a much-needed facility that assists amputees.
“We have been doing this for the past three years and we recently opened our centre in Nadi where we bring our amputees who need prosthetics,” said Mr Patel.
“Our main function is we bring in an expert who measures each patient and in accordance with their measurements, he creates prosthetic legs for them.
“With this new group of about seven members of the Western Disabled People’s Association, we created below the knee prosthetics for each of them.”
Mr Patel said while each prosthetic comes with a price tag of about $500, none of the funds goes to the centre.
“All of it is used to create the prosthetics specifically for each person that comes to us.
“Some of the money goes to our technical expert who we brought in from India and who is also training a local so that we can have someone in-house to do this for the centre.
“None of our work is for profit. Our main goal is to help amputees.”
Mr Patel said Fiji has one of the worst numbers of diabetes in the world “and our rate of amputation is worse too”.
“So, as a centre, we wanted to do something that helps people who lose these limbs not be confined to their homes but gives them renewed hope.”
Meanwhile, the Western Disabled People’s Association is appealing to members in need of below-the-knee prosthetics to contact the association.
